Evaluating the impact of caregiver support programs
Host Institution: Baycrest Health Sciences
Support groups can provide emotional support to caregivers while empowering them with concrete information on providing engaging activities for individuals living with dementia.
With $50,000 in funding from the Strategic Opportunity Fund and a further $42,418 from the Spark Program, this project evaluated four different caregiver support interventions at Baycrest and went on to develop: (1) an online support group that provided web-based intervention support to family caregivers of people with early onset and frontal temporal dementias; (2) a combined model of caregiver support for caregivers and arts engagement for care recipients; and (3) an in-person, creative writing course. The project team also developed a caregiver assessment toolkit to evaluate the different caregiver support options with a standardized approach, measure intervention outcomes and collect feedback to further refine future iterations of the programs.
Caregivers in all intervention groups reported high satisfaction and indicated that the programs met their expectations and that they would recommend them to others. In the online group, participants noted high satisfaction with teleconferencing, and reported improved mood, a statistically significant reduction in caregiver burden and an increase in quality of life. Project evaluation is ongoing with data collection expected to conclude in April 2018.
The ideal outcome of this program is to decrease the burden on family caregivers, increase quality of life for both the family care provider and the person with dementia, and as a result decrease premature institutionalization of people affected by dementia.