Understanding the impact of caring for a family member with dementia

Dr Jan Oyebode, Professor of Dementia Care, University of Bradford, along with researchers from other UK universities, has undertaken a study to understand of how providing care for a relative with dementia impacts on carers. The team asked people how caring affected their ability to fulfil fundamental human needs.

They conducted 42 semi-structured interviews, selecting diverse carers (including people from different ethnicities, rural vs urban, young carers, etc.) and analysed the themes arising. This 'needs-led' approach has not been used before and they believe it could give a fresh and useful understanding of the dementia carer perspective.

Since this first step, the team has gone on to build a set of scales (called SIDECAR) that measure dementia carers’ quality of life. Further steps are to look at how the framework could be used as a starting point for the provision of effective carer support.