26th Alzheimer Europe Conference: Becky Field (Researcher, PhD student and Occupational Therapist) attends and gives presentation

Becky & Jacki

I attended the 26^th Alzheimer Europe Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark (31 October–2 November 2016) http://www.alzheimer-europe.org/Conferences/2016-Copenhagen

The theme of the conference was “excellence in dementia research and care”. It was great to learn about research and service developments across Europe.

Personal highlights from the conference were

-   Hearing from people living with dementia and their caregivers, reminding us what an important contribution they can and do make to research and services.  

- Learning about the work going on in Scotland to develop and deliver post diagnostic support services; great to hear about how it happens, and that post diagnostic support is offered to everyone with a diagnosis of dementia; also to hear about Allied Health Professional roles in dementia services.

http://Alzscot.org                    http://alzscot.org/talking-dementia

The presentation I gave was called ‘Psychosocial Interventions: identifying influences on take up’. This was based on interviews carried out with people living with dementia and their family carers about experiences of participating in a community occupational therapy intervention (as part of the ‘Valuing Active Life in Dementia (VALID)’ research study). As part of my PhD research I am trying to identify influences on why people may or may not accept offers of psychosocial interventions and feel ready to engage in them. This is because government policy now recommends post-diagnostic support and psychosocial interventions, and there is a growing evidence to support the benefits of these interventions. Yet, there is little research about what may help or prevent people from engaging in such interventions to inform development of post diagnostic services.  I hope my doctoral research can contribute to these developments.

As part of the conference I also attended the Interdem Academy Master class: ‘Involving people with dementia as advisors to your research’. http://interdem.org/?page_id=4636

Funder: National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Programme Grants for Applied Research: Grant number: RP-PG 0610-10108

The ‘Valuing Active Life in Dementia’ is evaluating the effectiveness of a community occupational therapy intervention for people with mild to moderate dementia living in the community and their family carers. If you would like more information about this study please see https://www.ucl.ac.uk/valid

If you would like more information about my doctoral research please do get in touch b.field@sheffield.ac.uk