The Talking Sense Communication Programme for Dementia Carers

Summary

Do family carers of people with dementia benefit from communication therapy and training? This study will only involve carers of people with dementia. Nearly all people with dementia will experience some difficulty communicating. Family carers of people with dementia have described communication and associated behaviour difficulties as one of the hardest to cope with.

This is a PhD study. The student/investigator has previously produced a detailed manual of approaches for supporting relatives of people with dementia who are experiencing communication difficulties. Previously published communication guides by other authors do not present research evidence.

Carers will be recruited to this study from the local NHS older person's mental health service overseen by their relative's psychiatrist. Only family carers will be included. Recruits will be randomly assigned to a treatment group or a control group. People in the control group will receive treatment as usual. The carers will be seen at home or at an NHS site if they prefer. The investigator and carer will work through the contents of the manual together. The manual is designed to consider their knowledge, thinking, skills and behaviour. The treatment will take no more than 4.5 hours over a period of up to 12 weeks.

Carers will be asked to complete questionnaires before and after the treatment. As well as background information, these questionnaires will look for any significant effects of the treatment on carers' anxiety and depression, carers' quality of life, carers' belief in their ability to care, communication difficulties experienced and the carers perceptions of their relatives communication competence.

A sample of 15 carers will also be interviewed by a third party interviewer who will be an existing speech and language therapy employee of Solent NHS Trust (see attached job description and person specification). The interviews will ask more specifically about their thoughts, feelings and opinions of this intervention and their experience in addressing communication difficulties.

Conditions

• Dementia

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

The Talking Sense manual

Talking Sense is a recently written therapy manual for professionals to use with carers of people with dementia. It is intended to be used one to one with carers and is individualisable according to their relatives degree of communication difficulty or the extent to which the carer experiences difficulty with communication. The approach addresses the carers knowledge, skills, thinking and behaviour in a series of interdependent steps. In this study it will be delivered to carers during 3 home visits and up to a total of 4.5 hours.

BEHAVIORAL

Treatment as usual - communication information and advice

Carers will receive the existing model of support provided by the speech and language therapy service. This is based on a one hour visit during which questions will be answered and specific advice given. No leaflets or manual will be used.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Solent NHS Trust

  collaborator OTHER_GOV

• The Sir Halley Stewart Trust

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• University of Portsmouth

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Chris Markham, Ph.D. · University of Portsmouth

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2012-03-31

Primary Completion

2013-10-31

Completion

2014-03-31

Countries

• United Kingdom

Study Locations