SABD-Fam process evaluation

Background

In Germany, most people with dementia live at home and are supported and cared for by informal (family) carers. Informal carers are required to constantly adapt care to the changing needs of the person living with dementia (and to their own needs) in order to stabilize the home-based care arrangement in the long term. As part of the National Dementia Strategy (Measure 2.8.2), a pilot project is planned to develop and implement a low-threshold, multi-professional intervention to support informal carers and stabilize home-based care arrangements for people living with dementia.

Project aims

In this pilot project funded by Malteser Hilfsdienst e.V. The Ludwigshafen University of Business and Society (Head: Dr. Doris Arnold) is using a participatory research design to test the new interdisciplinary care concept of “Specialized outpatient care for people living with dementia and their families” (SABD-Fam). The core of the intervention is the continuous support of people living with dementia and their families by scientifically trained dementia consultants and the implementation of case conferences in interdisciplinary dementia teams. The DZNE care structures working group in Witten (Head: Dr. Bernhard Holle) is responsible for the process evaluation in the project. This aims to describe the complexity of the SABD-Fam intervention, to identify factors that promote and hinder implementation and to generate initial findings on the mechanisms of action of the intervention.

Methods

In the first phase of the project, the SABD-Fam intervention will be (further)developed and adapted to the context of a dementia service and an outpatient care service of the Malteser. The task of the process evaluation is to describe the intervention in detail within the framework of a logical model that presents the necessary resources, planned activities and the short, medium and long-term goals of the intervention. In the subsequent implementation phase, the SABD-Fam intervention is tested in the various Malteser settings and continuously adapted. In this phase, the process evaluation documents the adaptation of the intervention and its reasons and identifies factors that promote and hinder implementation. It will also show how people living with dementia and their informal carers are reached and how both – they and the professionals involved – experience and evaluate the SABD-Fam intervention and its implementation. This will be done by means of document analyses, interviews with experts, focus group interviews, secondary analysis of the interviews conducted with informal carers and people living with dementia in the implementation project and a by a satisfaction survey of users.

Expected Results

The expected results of the process evaluation include a detailed description of the SABD-Fam intervention, the documentation of its implementation and continuous adaptation, the identification of factors that promote and hinder implementation and initial findings on mechanisms of action. These results will be summarized in a final scientific report and provide recommendations for the integration of the SABD-Fam intervention into routine care.

The project is associated with the “Stability of Care Arrangements” (SoCA) project line at the DZNE Witten, which researches the complex phenomenon of the stability of home-based care arrangements and aims to contribute to the long-term development of care interventions and care structures that promote stability.