This is an in-person event including a networking lunch at 1pm, with presentations starting at 2pm. The presentations will also be lived streamed.
Please sign up via Eventbrite to attend: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/photo-elicitation-to-investigate-the-experience-of-informal-older-carers-tickets-316588142657?aff=ebdsoporgprofile
Background:
By 2025, over one million people will be living in the UK with dementia. UK Government stated that by 2020 it wanted to see an increase in the numbers of people with dementia living and receiving care at home. The majority of home-care in the UK is currently provided by informal carers (IC). The term ‘informal carer’ includes home-care provided by a loved-one, friend, neighbour or other known person, usually being unpaid. Existing research has examined the experience of being an IC to people living with dementia (PLWD) and service utilisation of formal (paid) care, but there is limited research using a qualitative approach or exploring this for community-dwelling PLWD, particularly semi-rural communities and their ICs. Research on these groups in rural settings is urgently required, since access to support services has been limited due to the Covid-19 pandemic and increasing issues of isolation. Building on the successful 2017 MICRA seedcorn grant (Engaging older people through participatory arts to explore the relevance of Age-friendly Cities’ domains in rural communities of NW England) and bringing together researchers from public health and humanities, with particular skills in qualitative research, arts methodologies, and public engagement, this research project will use participatory arts based, qualitative methodologies to engage older ICs in a semi-rural community in NW England to investigate their experience of caring for PLWD.
Aims:
1. To create a novel team of interdisciplinary researchers to undertake this pilot study.
2. To recruit and train a team of over 60 year old researchers from semi-rural West Yorkshire in participatory art research methods.
3. To use qualitative research methods to explore and document the impact of COVID -19 restrictions on ICs of PLWD in the community.
4. To compare their experiences with UK government guidelines on support for ICs/ PLWD during COVID-19 restrictions.
5. To disseminate the findings to the local community, local voluntary sector (VS) and local/regional/national policy-makers.
6. To use the findings from this pilot to inform a larger scale mixed-methods study to investigate IC of PLWD support needs at scale.
Methods:
In this pilot study, we recruited four participants and trained them in photo-elicitation (P-E) research methods, which can be used uncover what is important to participants and empower them in order to generate the conditions for a participant-led exploration of the experience of ICs of PLWD living in the community. Using this methodology, participants identified and recorded using smart phones, digital cameras or disposable film cameras, aspects of their day to day caring responsibilities and interactions with the people they care for and the wider community. Participants were interviewed using their photographs as a prompt for further exploration of the issue. Thematic analysis was conducted and themes identified and categorised to provide a rich narrative describing the experience of this group during COVID-19 restrictions.
Findings and conclusions:
Analysis is currently underway and the findings and conclusions from this study will be presented via oral presentation.
