How can digital technologies help to provide community dementia support and reduce loneliness?
The COVID-19 pandemic was particularly hard on people living with dementia as lockdown stripped away the routines and family and community support they rely on. Community dementia support groups had to adapt quickly to use digital technologies to re-engage and support people in their homes in creative ways tailored to the specific needs of people living with dementia and their carers.
To develop new hybrid approaches for supporting people living with dementia in the community and helping them live safely in their own homes, the London Office Technology and Innovation and the Helix Centre (part of the UK Dementia Research Institute Care Research & Technology Centre at Imperial College London) undertook a London-wide project to co-design and pilot new ways to provide community dementia support. Although this project focused on the needs of people living with dementia, it has the potential to inform and impact community support for other groups in a post-COVID society.
To enable other organisations to undertake similar initiatives, the Helix Centre has developed an easy-to-use toolkit capturing the learning and resources for each of the project phases.
