This research programme focuses on the economic, social, health and emotional costs of caring for people with dementia. The research will provide longitudinal estimates of the relationships between informal care costs and cognitive function, comorbidities and behavioural changes in people with dementia, including an exploration of the potential of psychosocial interventions and technology-based interventions for care-givers to ameliorate the potential burden of care.

This project examined personhood in dementia within formal care provision and relationships in Ireland. The concept of personhood within the context of formal care was examined through three different lenses: formal care policy, formal care settings and formal care relationships. Each lens provides different insights and perspectives into personhood in dementia and at both the macro and micro level of formal care provision. The central research question was: How is personhood in dementia conceptualised, expressed, facilitated and actualised in formal care in Ireland?

1. What is the Person with Parkinson's community knowledge and experience of existing voice assisted technology?

2. What is the knowledge, experience and attitudes of Speech and Language Therapists towards voice assisted technology in practice?

Resource allocation decision-making in dementia in Ireland is often characterised as being narrow, implicit and provider-driven, with little knowledge about how priorities are set and addressed, and to what effect. The absence of people with dementia from the decision-making process does much to undermine personhood and citizenship within dementia in Ireland.

Project Aim(s): This study on dementia and home design in Ireland was undertaken to inform the development of Universal Design Guidelines for Dementia Friendly Dwellings produced by the Centre for Excellence in Universal Design at the National Disability Authority in 2015. The study included an extensive scoping review of the literature, stakeholder engagement, and case studies of dwellings designed for people with dementia.

Project Aim(s): This paper reports findings from a systematic review of the literature on the general public’s knowledge and understanding of dementia/Alzheimer’s disease. The key purpose of the review was to evaluate existing literature with specific attention paid to conceptual and methodological issues and to key findings. Over a 20-year period, 40 published articles satisfied the inclusion criteria. Only 4 of these were qualitative and 5 were cross-national.

Project Aim(s):  This national survey investigates the location, resourcing, staff composition, treatments, waiting time, and numbers of patients attending memory clinics (MCs) in the Republic of Ireland. It also explores Directors’ attitudes to future service development including their views about the advantages and disadvantages of quality standards for MCs.

Project Aim(s): To provide new estimates of dementia prevalence at a national and local level in Ireland and new projections of future numbers of people with dementia.

Project Aim(s): This study aims to contribute to improving quality of life for people with end stage dementia living in residential care settings by investigating the experiences of elderly spouses whose relatives died with end-stage dementia in nursing homes in both Northern Ireland (NI) and the Republic of Ireland (RoI). A second aim is to develop guidelines for nursing home staff for the delivery of quality care in residents with end stage dementia in residential institutions.

Project Aim(s): To explore the attitudes of Irish and Swedish General Practitioners (GPs) to the diagnosis and disclosure of dementia to patients; to investigate GP under-graduate/post-graduate training in dementia; to examine the post-diagnostic support services available to GPs in both countries and to investigate the extent to which dementia is perceived as stigmatising.