Volunteers’ Support of Carers of Rural People Living with Dementia to Use a Custom-Built Application

Abstract

There is great potential for human-centred technologies to enhance wellbeing for people living with dementia and their carers. The Virtual Dementia Friendly Rural Communities (Verily Connect) project aimed to increase access to information, support, and connection for carers of rural people living with dementia, via a co-designed, integrated website/mobile application (app) and Zoom videoconferencing. Volunteers were recruited and trained to assist the carers to use the Verily Connect app and videoconferencing. The overall research design was a stepped wedge open cohort randomized cluster trial involving 12 rural communities, spanning three states of Australia, with three types of participants: carers of people living with dementia, volunteers, and health/aged services staff. Data collected from volunteers (n = 39) included eight interviews and five focus groups with volunteers, and 75 process memos written by research team members. The data were analyzed using a descriptive evaluation framework and building themes through open coding, inductive reasoning, and code categorization. The volunteers reported that the Verily Connect app was easy to use and they felt they derived benefit from volunteering. The volunteers had less volunteering work than they desired due to low numbers of carer participants; they reported that older rural carers were partly reluctant to join the trial because they eschewed using online technologies, which was the reason for involving volunteers from each local community.

Digital Adoption by an Organization Supporting Informal Caregivers During COVID-19 Pandemic Showing Impact on Service Use, Organizational Performance, and Carers’ Well-Being: Retrospective Population-Based Database Study With Embedded User Survey

“…The potential for appropriate digital technology to provide support and reassurance is recognized as a benefit for both the caregiver and the person for whom they care [ 43 ]. In some parts of the world, volunteers are also being integrated into care to help caregivers use custom-built apps [ 44 ].…”

The Impact of Population Ageing on Rural Aged Care Needs in Australia: Identifying Projected Gaps in Service Provision by 2032

“…However, as the majority of aged care services, from residential aged care to home care packages, require local staff and face-to-face delivery, a multi-pronged approach is required beyond funding alone to be sustainable. Aligned with older people’s preference for ageing in place rather than living in residential care, our research shows that a whole-community approach to supporting their older population is needed when government-funded services are inadequate [ 29 ]. This may involve deploying local community members as volunteers to support older people and their caregivers to complement formal aged care provision.…”

“Our focus is on illness and loneliness”: Volunteer work engagement, compassion satisfaction, compassion fatigue, self‐care and motivations to volunteer

“…Likewise, the strong positive correlation between engagement and CS confirms the trend shown by Hidalgo (2018) or Meneghini et al (2018) et al (2012, 2015). Likewise, as it is essentially a sample of retired people, as in Wilson and Musick (1997), the Enhancement function can be recognised to have a relevant role since, through their volunteering, they can feel involved and capable of contributing to society according to Russell et al (2019 and Wilding et al (2021). Along the same lines, it is logical that the Career function should appear last since they have mostly finished their professional careers.…”

“…In addition to the pleasant feelings of Compassion Satisfaction, and Engagement, other individual elements intercede in the causes whereby a person starts or carries on health and social care volunteering (Selli et al, 2008 ). Recent studies reported a positive association between older people's volunteering, cognitive functioning (Guiney et al, 2021 ; Han et al, 2020 ), physical health (Pettigrew et al, 2020 ) and acquisition of skills or increased social connectedness (Jongenelis et al, 2020 ; Russell et al, 2019 ; Wilding et al, 2021 ). Authors are according with Haski‐Leventhal's ( 2009 ) theoretical proposal based on altruistic motivations or civic concerns.…”