Project Details

Background

Caring for people with dementia at home is often a stressful situation for relatives, resulting in an increased risk of developing the disease themselves. The 7th goal of health promotion and prevention, "healthy ageing", which is also defined in SGBV § 20, para. 3, is therefore jeopardised for many caring relatives of people with dementia.

In order to avoid secondary patients and to enable the most stable home care arrangements possible, it is necessary to support family carers of people with dementia in the process of coping with care tasks with specific, preventive and supportive measures. In this context, some studies point to the importance of designing preventive or health-promoting counselling and/or support services in a socially sensitive manner, as the way in which people cope with crisis-related challenges has a social gradient or differs depending on their milieu. In order for support measures to be effective, it is important to take greater account of social circumstances. However, there are still considerable gaps in the state of research, particularly with regard to the situation of home care arrangements for dementia.

The PfADe research project will investigate the measurable significance of social context factors (milieu, living situation) with regard to the care and health situation and the extent to which support services within existing regional care and counselling structures (e.g. in the context of care counselling or in the sense of accompanying home-based case management) can be adapted to the respective realities of life (social/spatial nature) of dementia care tandems.

Research question

Which characteristics can be used to validly depict the arrangements and needs of caring relatives and people with dementia in a socially and environmentally sensitive typology?

Objectives

PfaDe aims to focus on assistance and support services to safeguard and stabilise the well-being and quality of life of family carers. The aim is to a) promote their individual opportunities for healthy ageing and b) sustainably strengthen domestic care arrangements. Typical stress and care situations of caregiving relatives and people with dementia are systematically presented and dimensions of social inequality and their significance in the context of coping with domestic care situations in dementia are analysed. Preventive and health-promoting needs and potentials of caring relatives as well as the possibilities for strengthening their health resources are derived from this.

Methods

1. creation of a comprehensive knowledge base

As part of an initial systematic review, the question of the extent to which previous studies have taken social context factors (e.g. living situation, milieu) into account will be investigated. Furthermore, a systematic overview of political and socio-legal development steps will be compiled in this work package in order to determine whether and, if so, to what extent issues of social inequality are also reflected here.

2. Secondary data analysis

A special feature of the project is the use of different data sets.

Existing data sets from the project evaluation of the DementiaNet StädteRegion Aachen, the DemNet D study (multicentre, interdisciplinary evaluation study of dementia networks in Germany) and the German Ageing Survey (DEAS) are analysed in three sub-steps using adapted cluster procedures.

This project is funded by the GKV Spitzenverband as part of the model programme in accordance with § 8 Para. 3 SGBXI.

Contact:

Prof Dr Karin Wolf-Ostermann, wolf-ostermannuni-bremen.de

Henrik Wiegelmann, M.A., hwiegelmannuni-bremen.de