Claudia Meyer

People living with dementia often have specific care needs that are provided (mostly) by informal carers (that is, family and/or friends). There may come a time, however, when the physical and/or emotional demands of caregiving are no longer manageable, hence the importance of supportive residential respite care without transition to permanent care. Respite can be defined as a pause, or an interval of rest, from the duties of caring, but doesn’t necessarily require a physical distancing from the person living with dementia. For the carer, transition of a person living with dependency to permanent care, can be laden with a combination of guilt, confusion and relief, but this will vary from person to person. 

This project aims to co-design a new and novel approach to short-term residential respite care and transition into permanent care in conjunction with people living with dementia and their carers, residential care staff and management. This project is exploratory and, as such, it is unclear what the exact program will look like. The project is designed to generate ideas on what might work, rather than testing a known intervention. A prototype program will be generated from the co-design sessions, followed by the testing of assumptions related to the program, to identify how to make the program better.

At the time of award, Dr Meyer was a Research Fellow at the Bolton Clarke Research Institute.