Woods, Bob

Purpose: Informal care constitutes an important part of the total care for people with dementia. Therefore, the impact of the syndrome on their caregivers as well as that of health and social care services for people with dementia should be considered.

Background and Objectives Arts activities can improve social connectedness and foster reciprocity between people living with dementia and their caregivers. The extent to which the arts can help shape attitudes towards dementia remains unclear. This paper explores the impact of a 12-week visual arts program "Dementia and Imagination" on the attitudes of family and professional caregivers through a mixed-methods longitudinal investigation, underpinned by a conceptual framework of the arts in dementia care.

Background: Assistive technology (AT) is rapidly emerging within dementia care and support. One area of AT application is support of people with dementia in compensating for cognitive symptoms and thereby promoting their self-management.

Objectives: Home dwelling people with dementia and their informal carers often do not receive the formal care services they need. This study examined and mapped the research regarding interventions to improve access and use of formal community care services. Method: This is a scoping review with searches in PubMed, CINAHL, PsychINFO, Medline, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Social Science Citation index and searches of grey literature in international and national databases.

Objectives: Previously developed dementia caregiver profiles defined by caregiver age and burden, have been associated with caregiver quality of life, depression and perseverance time. The current aim was to investigate whether these caregiver profiles could predict subsequent service use. In addition, non-personal (e.g. meals on wheels) and supportive services (e.g. Alzheimer café) in early dementia were investigated as predictors.

Purpose: The pressure on healthcare budgets remains high, partially due to the ageing population. Economic evaluation can be a helpful tool to inform resource allocation in publicly financed systems. Such evaluations frequently use health-related outcome measures. However, in areas such as care of older people, improving health outcomes is not necessarily the main focus of care interventions and broader outcome measures, including outcomes for those providing informal care, may be preferred when evaluating such interventions.

Background People with dementia and informal carers often access formal care late in the process of dementia. The barriers and facilitators to service use from the perspectives of different stakeholders involved are not well understood. Thus, we aimed to explore the barriers and facilitators of access to and utilisation of formal care from the perspectives of people with dementia, their informal carers and health and social care professionals.

Background: With 10.5 million people with dementia in Europe and $301 billion associated costs, governments face challenges organizing access to care.; Objective: To examine the costs related to formal and informal care use and quality of life for people with dementia in eight European countries, and explore the association with unmet needs.; Methods: Cross-sectional data from 451 persons with dementia and their informal caregivers of the Actifcare cohort study were obtained.

Background: Relatively little attention has been given to the effects of caregiving context on the experience of family members providing care for a person with dementia. This review aims to examine the impact of caregiving on the quality of the relationship between caregiver and care-recipient and the impact of the quality of the relationship between the caregiver and care-recipient on the caregiver's and care-recipient's wellbeing.