We are always looking at ways to make sure that the courses and resources that we offer are the best they can be at supporting carers of people living with dementia.
The Empowered Conversations course has been designed to enable carers to establish and maintain good communication and relationships with those they support. Through undertaking detailed research we have found that the face-to-face version of Empowered Conversations reduces carer stress and improves carer communication.
Feedback from carers indicates that the course is in an optimum form and so we are ready to test it further in a large trial.
In partnership with the University of Manchester, we have secured highly competitive National Institute for Health Research: Research for Patient Benefit funding to do a ‘feasibility’ trial to pave the way for a much larger research study in the future. This is important because a big trial will help us identify if our course works, but trials are expensive and unhelpful if they go wrong.
This funding of £291, 000 over 24-months will enable us to evaluate the impact of the online Empowered Conversations. We will collect questionnaire data and interview carers about their experiences. We will also collect data from people living with dementia. As well as enabling us to improve online Empowered Conversations (if required) on the basis of carer feedback, this will also pave to way to offer it nationally as part of a larger trial.
Dr Lydia Morris is a Research Fellow at the University of Manchester. Lydia has been a core member of the Empowered team over the last 5 years. To contact Lydia for more information :
Email: lydia.morris@manchester.ac.uk | Twitter: @DrLydiaMorris