Creating intergenerational activities to support families caring for people with dementia - Completion of the DEMcare4all project
Dementia is a serious neurodegenerative disorder that affects millions of people worldwide. According to recent figures, more than 55 million people worldwide are living with dementia, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). This number is expected to reach 78 million by 2030 and 139 million by 2050.
When a close family member or friend develops dementia, it is likely that each family member will be trying to cope with their own feelings. However, within the family there are two sides that are equally sensitive and need special treatment and care in these circumstances.
On the one hand, it is well known how painful a condition like Alzheimer’s is for both patients and their relatives – how difficult it is to experience their daily life and how mentally and physically exhausting caring for them can be. Children and young people in a family caring for a person with dementia also need time to adapt to this new situation. It can be very difficult for them, and they may need help and support to talk about and understand dementia, to think about who should tell them, what to tell them and when to tell them. Ultimately, the whole burden of care and support for both groups falls on family carers, who need training in managing such situations to be able to better understand their emotions and feelings.
The European project Erasmus+ DEMcare4all (https://demcare4all.eu/) has addressed this issue, where 8 partners from 6 countries have tried over the last 2 years (September ’22 to August ’24) to create educational material to promote intergenerational activities for families caring for people with dementia, involving the people with dementia themselves and children aged 6-17 years old.
The impact of the project activities was particularly impressive as a total of 187 participants, formal (health professional) and informal (family members) carers of people with dementia, dementia patients (including people with onset dementia 50+) and children and young people aged 6-17 years, participated in the activities of the project’s Work Packages 2 & 3, which included educational materials to raise awareness on dementia and Alzheimer’s disease as well as materials to create materials for children 6-17 years old to implement intergenerational activities on dementia. In addition, 233 people from the project target groups participated in the activities of Work Package 4, through which intergenerational activities involving people with dementia and children were piloted in each country.
All the training material is now available free of charge on the project website https://demcare4all.eu/training-material/
Anyone interested can use this material to continue to promote intergenerational activities on dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
As the DEMcare4all project is coming to an end, we would like to thank everyone who has contributed to the successful implementation of the project and hope that the material produced during this time will be useful in changing society’s attitude towards the disease as well as providing effective support to families caring for people with dementia.