DYNAMIC: Resources to improve social care for young onset dementia

  • Research type

    Research Study

  • Full title

    Social care planning and provision for people with young onset dementia and their families: current practice and resources for improvement – phase 2.

  • IRAS ID

    351593

  • Contact name

    Jan R Oyebode

  • Contact email

    j.oyebode@bradford.ac.uk

  • Sponsor organisation

    University of Bradford

  • Duration of Study in the UK

    2 years, 6 months, 1 days

  • Research summary

    Our aim is to produce recommendations and resources to improve social care for people with young onset dementia (starting under 65 years) and their families.

    Why are we doing this?
    Social care and support for people with young onset dementia is central to their quality of life. However, it is seldom well addressed and hardly researched. People directly affected by young onset dementia were keen for us to do some work on improving social care.

    What do we plan to do?
    Our project is funded by NIHR, started in April 2023 and finishes in October 2025. This application relates to the second half.

    Over the first half, we found out about current social care practice and experiences by gathering accounts from 25 people with young onset dementia and family carers and surveying social care staff. We had IRAS approval for these activities.

    This new application relates to the second half of the study. So far, in this half, we have presented findings from the first half to stakeholders, via a consultation workshop, to discuss priority areas for improvement. The two areas identified are raising social care staff awareness of young onset dementia and helping families to manage the financial impact.

    Our next steps are to:
    • conduct a review of existing evidence on good practice in these priority areas
    • interview 10-12 social care practitioners and policy-makers to gather examples of good practice in the two areas
    • produce recommendations and resources, informed by evidence and good practice, to address the priority issues.

    This application focuses on the interviews with social care practitioners/ policy-makers as these activities involve collecting data from research participants.Using purposive sampling, we will recruit from our existing networks and through further outreach as required.

    The study will take place in England, online and/or face-to-face.

  • REC name

    Social Care REC

  • REC reference

    25/IEC08/0004

  • Date of REC Opinion

    6 May 2025

  • REC opinion

    Further Information Favourable Opinion