Are we Obliged, Willing and Prepared to Care?

It’s always so wonderful when you see a study come to an end and see the results. I’ve been an Alzheimer’s Society Research Monitor on Dr Sahdia Parveen’s ‘Caregiving HOPE Study’, at Bradford University from the start. Today we were their to discuss the results as this part of the study – step one – comes to a close. I say, ‘a close’, but really it’s the start of a new chapter, as the finding could make a difference for many people and the next phase will start.

It was an afternoon meeting so a mid morning start, which felt very weird 😂……I was at a loss what to do for 4hrs as I was still up at silly o’clock 🙄….but at least a nice sky view from my back window…

Anyway, taxi arrived, train arrived followed by train number two at Hull and we trundled on time along the Humber

The other two monitors on this project are Sandra and Htay….we don’t see one another that often so it’s always nice to catch up.

Anyway I arrived at Bradford to find Sandra sat in the café and 3 of our phd students getting a cuppa and Sahdia came and said hello before she went to set up the room.

We trundled upstairs, meeting Htay on the way and chatted happily before the few others arrived

There were quite a few apologies. Time of year, summer and end of uni year maybe …….

Sahdia briefly went through the summary of results. They smashed their recruitment numbers. Not surprisingly South Asian carers did feel more culturally obligated to provide care however, white British were more willing to provide emotional and nursing care.

There was a high percentage of carers who had clinical levels of anxiety and depression. South Asians had higher levels of burden and depression

Because they recruited such a high number it didn’t matter that they had a large drop out as they were still well within their target number. The main cause in the drop in numbers was many moved into residential care and they’d had to exclude them.

Val joined us by Skype and Ripaljeet arrived. Havn’t seen her for aaaages….so lovely to see her.

The outcomes were so interesting and not what you would expect in some circumstances.

Key message was we need to increase preparedness to care…….for both current and future carers.

The second study was on those not currently caring. What would enable them to feel more prepared to care for a relative with dementia in the future. They smashed recruitment in this too. The findings matched the findings of the carers study. Age differences were very interesting. The south Asian older people wanted to go in a care home because they thought they’d get better care, whereas white British didn’t want to go in a care home.

Today we were also there to discuss hosting an event in October as we’d been successful in getting a dissemination grant from the Alzheimer’s Society.

We’re aiming the event at carers but also some health and social care professionals as well. We can have 80 people as that’s what the funding allows. Sahdia aims to ask, ‘What would help them feel prepared to care’, ready for the start of the next phase of her work ………Caregiving Prep….

We’d speak about why we got involved. The participants all provided wonderful photos that we could make use of in a display.

Sahdia gave us all a gift of the book from the study that’s been published and amazing bits she’d hand made.

A great study with fascinating findings with fabulous people …….