Family carer knowledge exchange project

We are interested in how family carers of people with dementia develop and maintain resilience in the care giving role and we are designing a project to help family carers to be more resilient and to better cope with the demands of care giving. As a team of researchers, we have reviewed studies of family carers'experiences in other countries and we have also conducted a national survey of family carers in Ireland to find out what makes them resilient. With this information, we assembled a small group of family cares of people with dementia to design a project aimed at enhancing carers'resilience; we call this group the Enhancing Carers Resilience (EnCaRE) Group. As we come to better understand resilience and how to strengthen it, we now wish to communicate this to a wider audience of family carers and their families in Ireland. To do this, we will undertake an information and outreach campaign in regional centres throughout Ireland, using local networks and modern communication technologies, like webinars and the internet, so that a larger audience will get the benefits of our knowledge. We have conducted a similar national campaign in the past, when we worked with older people to share our knowledge of financial exploitation and to help them to protect themselves from such exploitation. We believe that these knowledge transfer and exchange (KTE) activities are an important way of bringing the knowledge gained from research to the people who are most likely to benefit from such knowledge.

Award Date

28 September 2017

Award Value

€31153

Principal Investigator

Professor Gerard Fealy

Host Institution

University College Dublin

Scheme

Knowledge Exchange and Dissemination Scheme