Effective home support in dementia care: Components, impact and costs of tertiary prevention

AIM To conduct a programme of research to discern different models of home support, systematise them, survey their current operation and evaluate their cost-effectiveness in providing care for people with dementia/their carers, from the NHS in partnership with local authority social care and voluntary organisations. OBJECTIVES 1) To develop evidenced-based guidance on home support models for dementia care with direct applicability by NHS Trusts and partner organisations to derive benefits in terms of more efficient and effective care and enhance the patient/carer experience by conducting: a) An evidence synthesis of which components lead to cost-effective care and how these can be combined into different models of home support. b) An appraisal of how the current pattern of provision in England conforms to these models. c) An evaluation of different emerging models of home support in later stage dementia. 2) To test for preliminary evidence of a model in early stage dementia through a pragmatic implementation trial. 3) To determine the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of different models of support in enhancing well-being, reducing the number of hospital admissions and delaying care home admission. 4) To determine the effectiveness of supported implementation of evidence-based guidance through a toolkit developed in one Trust area and partner organisations and roll out with commissioners, managers and practitioners. 5) To conduct an integrated quantitative and qualitative evaluation from the viewpoint of carers and people with dementia concerning the costs of home support and their preferences for different attributes of care. BACKGROUND With population ageing, dementia represents a significant challenge. It is a major cause of disability and high cost care for older people and most people with dementia live at home. An immediate priority is helping them to live well at home, which necessitates developing effective and efficient home support services. However, little is known about which models of home support offer effective care and there has been little translation of evidence into routine practice within the NHS and partner organisations. Existing operational models are undeveloped and tend not to rely on research evidence. The proposed programme intends to explicate the models in existence and translate these into practice by provision and testing of evidence-based guidelines and the development and testing of a pragmatic intervention in early-stage dementia. RESEARCH PLAN Workstream 1: (1.1) Evidence synthesis of literature detailing the effective components of dementia care and applying these to home support models; (1.2) A survey of current provision in England applying these models; (1.3) Developing an economic model of the cost-effectiveness of home support for dementia. Workstream 2: (2.1) A stratified randomised controlled trial of dementia advice workers in addition to treatment as usual across 9 memory clinics, post-diagnosis and after 12 months; (2.2) Naturalistic study comparing specialist models of home support, compared to generic home care, after statutory assessment in the community. Economic analysis in both. (2.3) Field testing of a dementia toolkit to guide managers/commissioners. Workstream 3:(3.1) Analysis of costs to people with dementia/carers through focus groups; (3.2) Discrete Choice Experiment eliciting preferences for components of support; (3.3) Economic cost-utility modelling of impact of home support models in England. RESEARCH TEAM It has extensive experience in applied research in older people s services and dementia, including: old age psychiatry, nursing, occupational therapy, social care, sociology/qualitative analysis, statistics, health economics, systematic reviews, trial design and memory services. The team possess the authority to ensure implementation and dissemination of findings in the NHS and social care. RESEARCH E