Computers for People with Dementia

Organisation: Dementia Voice / Housing 21
Funding: £27,300

The project will be delivered in partnership by Dementia Voice, part of the Housing 21 group and Innovations in Dementia, a community interest company. 'Innovations in Dementia' has extensive experience of enabling individuals with dementia to learn or re-learn computer skills. This project will pilot a method of disseminating their experience to day-care staff, who work with older people with dementia.

The project will include an evaluation of the benefits of computer-based activities for people with dementia in day-care settings, as well as the effectiveness of the training process for care staff.

Pilot computer projects will be set up in two Housing 21 Day Centres to test out the model and investigate the best ways of:

• supporting people with dementia to use computers
• providing training and support to staff to enable them to carry out this work
• evaluating this process and assessing outcomes for people with dementia, staff and Housing 21
• developing appropriate evaluation tools
• developing accessible training materials for use with people with dementia.