Improving Wellbeing and Health for Care Home Residents During COVID-19

Summary

More than 400,000 people in the UK live in care homes. These individuals are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19; many are frail and the majority have concurrent physical health problems and dementia. This group are at the highest risk of becoming severely ill with COVID-19 and are dependent on a stretched care workforce. The isolation, together with the stresses and distressing nature of the current work environment is also likely to have an impact on the mental health and well-being of care staff. It is vital to provide good quality support to enable care staff to remain resilient, and to enable good quality care that maintains the well-being of residents with dementia and reduces emerging neuropsychiatric symptoms in residents without increasing harmful sedative medications.

COVID E-WHELD is based on the optimized WHELD training intervention on successfully completed in randomised clinical trials (RCTs) in 86 care homes, more than 1000 people with dementia. WHELD reduced use of anti-psychotics, improved agitation and overall neuropsychiatric symptoms, improved quality of life and reduced mortality for people with dementia. A digital version of WHELD (eWHELD) with virtual supervision in a further care home RCT including 130 people with dementia has demonstrated benefits for staff carers and improvements in the quality of life of people with dementia, with eWHELD combined with virtual supervision, but not with e-learning alone.

The current project will evaluate a COVID-19 adapted version of eWHELD to address current needs of care homes during the COVID-19 pandemic. This will be undertaken in a 2 arm, 4 month, randomized cluster RCT in 1280 care homes (allowing for 75% drop out with COVID-19 outbreaks) to determine whether COVID-19 adapted eWHELD improves quality of life and mental health for people with dementia in care homes and the mental health of care staff.

Conditions

• Dementia

Interventions

OTHER

COVID WHELD

COVID WHELD is a COVID-19 adapted version of an established nursing home training intervention that confers benefits in well-being and neuropsychiatric symptoms for people with dementia. The adaptations include the development of digital resources to support the programme and virtual coaching.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• King's College London

  collaborator OTHER

• London School of Economics and Political Science

  collaborator OTHER

• University of East Anglia

  collaborator OTHER

• University of Hull

  collaborator OTHER

• Alzheimer's Society

  collaborator OTHER

• University of Exeter

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Clive Ballard, MD · The University of Exeter

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

60 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2021-03-01

Primary Completion

2021-12-01

Completion

2022-01-01

Countries

• United Kingdom

Study Locations