In Canada, long-term care and retirement home residents have experienced high rates of COVID-19 infection and death. Early efforts to protect residents included restricting all visitors as well as movement inside homes. These restrictions, however, had significant implications for residents’ health and well-being. Engaging with those most affected by such restrictions can help us to better understand their experiences and address their needs. In this qualitative study, 43 residents of long-term care or retirement homes, family members and staff were interviewed and offered recommendations related to infection control, communication, social contact and connection, care needs, and policy and planning. The recommendations were examined using an ethical framework, providing potential relevance in policy development for public health crises. Our results highlight the harms of movement and visiting restrictions and call for effective, equitable, and transparent measures. The design of long-term care and retirement policies requires ongoing, meaningful engagement with those most affected.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a disproportionate effect on older adults and their family caregivers (FCGs). For FCGs, the pandemic has impacted almost every dimension of their lives and caregiving routines, from their own risk of becoming ill to their access to resources that support caregiving. The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to examine the impact of COVID-19 on FCGs’ ability to provide care for their family member with dementia. A total of 115 FCGs who identified as having their family member living with dementia residing in the community completed the survey. Ten family caregivers participated in the follow-up focus groups. Recommendations to address the needs of FCGs now and in the future include: (1) making resources for care provision consistently available and tailored, (2) providing support for navigating the health care system, and (3) supplying concise information on how to provide care during public health emergencies.

This rapid review of systematic reviews examines non-professional interventions that have been implemented to support family caregivers of older adults with dementia who are living in the community. There is a robust body of empirical literature examining such interventions for family caregivers; therefore, this rapid review includes only systematic reviews. MEDLINE, CINAHL, and EMBASE databases were searched from September 2020 to December 2020, and 19 systematic reviews were selected for a full review. Psychosocial, psychoeducational, social support, and multicomponent interventions consistently show positive impacts on a variety of outcomes. The evidence suggests that multicomponent interventions that are tailored to the needs of individual caregivers are the most impactful interventions and should be utilized in future program development. The most effective combination of interventions is unknown and warrants further investigation. However, the repeated success of psychoeducational, psychosocial, and social support interventions suggests that when used together, they may be a successful combination that contributes to positive impacts on caregivers. This multicomponent intervention should be flexible, as interventions are most effective when they are tailored to the individual needs of caregivers and adapted over time as the needs of the caregiver and person living with dementia change with disease progression.

Family/friend caregivers are highly involved in supporting older adults with dementia who are 65 years of age or older with daily activities, especially when these older adults with dementia are living at home. There is a need for psychosocial interventions for caregivers of older adults with moderate to advanced dementia, as most interventions focus on persons at earlier stages. Namaste Care is a psychosocial, multisensory program intended to enhance quality of life for people with advanced dementia and their caregivers; however, it has not yet been adapted for use in a home setting. In this study, caregivers collaborated in adapting Namaste Care during workshops so that it could be delivered by caregivers of older adults with moderate to advanced dementia at home. Key findings were that Namaste Care resonated with the daily activities of caregivers, but that the intervention required modifications to ensure that it could be tailored to the needs and realities of caregivers and persons with dementia.

Based on findings from a study examining the lived experiences of dementia carers in their neighbourhoods, this article offers a vision of what dementia-friendly communities could look like from a carer perspective and in a Canadian context. Twelve carers in Ottawa and its surrounding regions were interviewed using a combination of social network maps, mobile interviews, and participant-driven photography. The findings, organized according to the categories “relationships”, “places”, and “everyday practices”, reveal that many of the carers’ choices regarding businesses, services, home location, outings, and everyday practices, are based on a desire to maintain social connections and social citizenship. The article concludes with recommendations for consideration in the planning of dementia-friendly neighbourhood initiatives.

This study explored family caregivers’ use of technology to care for people with dementia living at home. Three questions were pursued: (1) what are the important, unmet needs of family caregivers, (2) how do they use technologies to assist in care tasks, and (3) what do health care providers know about caregivers’ needs and technology use? Two comprehensive surveys were developed to answer these questions: one for family caregivers (n = 33), and one for health care providers (n = 60). Descriptive and quantitative analyses showed that caregivers’ important, unmet needs were in the domains of information, formal services, and emotional support. Caregivers make limited use of technology but believe in its potential usefulness. Health care providers agree that technology is useful in dementia care; however, they underestimate caregivers’ willingness to adopt technologies to communicate with providers. Findings prove caregiver willingness to use technology to support their care role and provide guidance regarding the caregiver needs that these technologies should address.

This longitudinal mixed-method study examined the types of help provided by caregivers to optimize participation of older adults with cognitive deficits post-stroke (care recipients), and how these types of help varied with caregiver’s burden. Twelve family caregivers of care recipients post-stroke completed a burden questionnaire and semi-structured interviews one month, three months, and six months following care recipient’s discharge home from acute care, rehabilitation, or day hospital. Care recipients completed cognitive tests and a social participation questionnaire. Types of help caregivers provided differed according to the amount of daily living support, degree of concern for care recipient’s well-being, and impact on caregivers’ social life. Interestingly, types of help fostering care recipient’s social participation, self-esteem, and abilities were unrelated to a negative impact on caregivers’ social life. Understanding how different types of help relate to caregiver burden could improve the types of help to optimize care recipients’ social participation without overburdening caregivers.