SUccessful Caregiver Communication and Everyday Situation Support in dementia care

SUCCESS (SUccessful Caregiver Communication and Everyday Situation Support in dementia care) will offer innovative, autonomously usable and continuous training approaches for teaching and learning by caregivers for Persons with Dementia (PwD). Our goal is to increase the carers knowledge and strength and capacity supporting approaches. The focus is specifically on interaction and communication strategies for caregivers across the stages of dementia, strategies to alleviate caregivers' stress, and share tips for practical life and leisure activities to enhance abilities, sense of purpose and joy. The resources are about daily life situations and struggles of dementia care, an area of stress for caregivers. In total we have created 77 knowledge resources, distributed as 5 role plays with avatar, 6 avatar lectures and 66 short, knowledge based articles. SUCCESS is delivered on a mobile device and presented by an avatar drawing from gamification elements to motivate, role-play practical situations, facilitate live conversations and other approaches to interact with the content. Via the mobile device users can learn to respond to specific situations, familiarize with strategies for emotional support and activities to maintain sense of purpose mindful of ability, their own feelings and specific behaviors to cope. The SUCCESS project seek to achieve these objectives: - Relieve caregiver stress by supporting interaction and communication strategies, suggest strategies for care and provide support related to practical life as well as leisure activities - Enhance Well-Being of PwD by improving relationships and decreasing their caregivers' stress-levels. - Role-play driven training through interaction with an avatar - Offer in Situ Training tailored to stage of dementia and specific new situations We have a User Centred Design process. The real-world pilot studies in Austria and Romania showed that despite increased care requirements, the perceived caring responsibilities decreased. Commercialization of project results and market strategies to keep SUCCESS available in the market is in progress.

The project designed and pilot tested the SUCCESS app, an avatar based service, containing relevant information specifically prepared to meet needs of informal caregivers for persons with dementia. The delivery of content ranges from reading text and "voice over" reading out content, to interactive approaches for learning, specifically role-play with the avatar. The selection of content is grounded in a user-centered approach, where selection of content reflect user-requirements and pilot trials shows that the app and services was well received and found relevant by users. The content was translated from English to local languages for the trials, Romanian and German. Trials shows reduced subjective perspective of burden of care for informal caregivers was reported although the care requirements increased with the progression of the health condition.

SUCCESS seeks to develop innovative approaches, based on strength and capacity supporting approaches, delivered on a mobile device to accompany caregivers and the public, to appropriately and effectively interact with PwD. It provides general methods and guides users to effectively respond to specific situations, strategies for emotional sup-port to maintain identities, suggest meaningful activities to maintain sense of purpose mindful of ability, and strategies for relatives to cope with behaviors and address their own feelings. SUCCESS will support the user through an avatar to engage in trainings and role plays, live conversations with a practical orientation to better integrate the learning, and gamification elements motivate the user to increase their knowledge about interaction strategies and everyday activities with PwD. The SUCCESS project defines these objectives: Caregiver Support to relieve stress: i) develop interaction and communication strategies for caregivers to use with PwD across each stage of dementia, ii) define and develop strategies for support/address caregiver stress, and iii) provide support related to practical life and leisure activities and generate ideas to help the PwD to enhance function and live with purpose and joy. We will seek to - Enhance Well-Being of PwD by improving the relationships with their caregivers through decreased stress-levels in their interaction. - Provide role-Play driven Training and support by speech interaction and role-plays with an avatar, personal narratives of experiences connecting different work-based activities, and story templates and intelligent nudges as scaffolds. - Offer in Situ Training tailored to stage of dementia and specific new situations - Set up a User Centred Design process and validate project results in real-world pilot studies in Austria and Romania - Assess Market and Business Efficiency: Define market and business strategy for bringing the SUCCESS services on the market in 2-3 years