Background: Eating, drinking and swallowing (EDS) difficulties are important to identify early. Awareness of EDS changes starts with those living with dementia or their family carers. However, little is known about early identification from the perspective of people with dementia. Aim: The aim of this study was to understand the experience of EDS…

Dementia patients may have language barriers and decreased comprehension ability. Their family caregivers can feel frustrated when communicating with them. Poor communication hinders family caregivers from obtaining accurate health information about patients, and may also increase their emotional burden, affecting patient care quality. The present…

In formal care organizations, personal support workers (PSWs) provide the most daily direct care to people living with dementia. PSWs receive the least comprehensive education and have the fewest opportunities for continuing education compared to nurses and physicians. PSWs need to be provided with opportunities for continuous education programs…

For caregivers of people living with major neurocognitive disorders (MNCD), adapting and applying methods optimizing learning (MOL) to a specific situation, based on preserved cognitive skills, can be challenging. This study aimed to 1) co-develop workshops, a web application and accompanying materials to support the operationalization of MOL; 2)…

Background: Adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families have high need for support services. This study assessed resource utilization among caregivers of intellectual and developmental disabilities and other conditions. Methods: We assessed 366 caregivers of adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities,…

Purpose: This paper describes a model of "Learning to care" derived from a study exploring how care workers in care homes learn to care for people living with dementia. The "Learning to care" model is primarily informal in nature in which influences such as formalised training and organisational culture impact care outcomes…

Background: Caring for persons with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD) demands specific expertise. Tacit knowledge seems to play an important role, but little is known about its nature, including what is necessary for its development and transfer. Aim: To gain understanding of the nature and development of tacit knowledge…

Background: In Austria, due to its history, only relatively little research on the topic of intellectual disabilities and dementia has been conducted to date. The present study thus aims to explore the challenges and tasks currently facing formal caregivers, together with assessing their wishes for further development. Methods: Ten semi-structured…

Background: The ageing of people with intellectual disabilities, with associated morbidity like dementia, calls for new types of care. Person-centred methods may support care staff in providing this, an example being Dementia Care Mapping (DCM). DCM has been shown to be feasible in ID-care. We examined the experiences of ID-professionals in using…

Background: Therapeutic untruths (TU) are used in dementia services to de-escalate distressing situations. The present authors explored the use of TU by care staff supporting people with an intellectual disability who displayed behaviours that challenged. Method: Data were collected from 126 staff (female = 72.2%; mean age = 41.9 years, SD = 10.7)…

People living with dementia may live in relationship with partners, family members, and significant others. Dementia has been shown to impact on such relationships but relationships also impact on the dementia condition. Thirteen people took part in the study: all were caring for a person living with dementia and two were themselves living with…

This paper explores and performs the ways daughters make meaning of the lived curriculum of their experience of their mothers' dementia. U.S. daughters disproportionally carry the burden of caring for mothers with dementia (Bath, 2017). Rabin (2017) writes, "As Washington debates the relative merits of health care legislation, many families…

Family caregivers of people with dementia can find the impairments in their relative's ability to communicate an enormous challenge. Peer facilitated educational interventions are a potentially efficient and effective way to address these complex communication issues. This paper examines the processes required to support the development of peer…

Providing educational interventions to informal dementia caregivers has been shown to have numerous positive outcomes including improving general well-being and quality of life as well as reducing depression, anxiety, and caregiver stress. The purpose of this study is the development, delivery, and evaluation of caregiver conferences to educate…

Background: Numbers of people with an intellectual disability and dementia present a global health and social challenge with associated need to reduce stress or agitation and improve quality of life in affected individuals. This study aimed to identify effectiveness of psychosocial interventions in social care settings and, uniquely, explore use…