Areas of investigation/research focus
With a methodological focus on the area of health services research, the research group picks up on current and anticipated issues of organizing the care of people with dementia and provides scientific results that are of high practical relevance.
The substantial issues of the research group Care Structures are:
- What is the contribution of the health care structures for people with dementia and their relatives regarding their needs, demands and stability of the care arrangement?
- How can health care structures be designed and developed in order to make a targeted contribution to the care of people with dementia and to supporting their families and relatives?
Besides the adjustment to the demands and needs of people with dementia and their families, there are more factors of crucial importance for the structural configuration of health care services. Important factors for the configuration of appropriate care services in their respective settings are: legal and economic parameters, organizational standards, interdisciplinary cooperation and the dementia-specific skills of the professions.
To focus on the two substantial issues, different research projects were established in the last years. For the Future it is planned two focus on different aspects in two major projects which are named :
StiV (Stability of care arrangements for people living with dementia)
The maintenance of sustainable care arrangements is a desired outcome in dementia care. The core result of the preceding study VerAH-Dem (DZNE Witten 2010-2013) is a phase model of informal dementia care trajectories, that identifies the creation and maintenance of stability as a leading principle of informal carers. The project StiV researches the complex phenomenon of stability of (home-based) care arrangements for people living with dementia with a broad spectrum of methodologies and pursues the goal to finally develop stability promoting care structures and interventions.
BeStaDem Studie (Programmatische Evaluation der besonderen stationären Demenzbetreuung in Deutschland)
Eine an den speziellen Bedürfnissen von Menschen mit schwerer Demenz ausgerichtete Versorgung in Altenheimen erfordert spezielle Konzepte. Viele verschiedene spezialisierte Versorgungskonzepte wurden entwickelt und in den letzten Jahren in der Praxis eingeführt. Es stellt sich nun die Frage, wie Strukturen für spezialisierte Versorgungskonzepte organisiert sein müssen um eine hohe Versorgungsqualität herzustellen. Ebenfalls soll untersucht werden wie die Finanzierung dieser Angebote erfolgen kann. Um diese Fragen zu beantworten ist das Ziel der Studie eine programmatische Evaluation der besonderen Demenzversorgung in der stationären Altenhilfe in Deutschland.