Project Palliare: equipping the qualified dementia workforce to support advanced dementia care and family caring

Demographic ageing is a worldwide process with the associated incidence of dementia expected to increase globally to over 80 million by 2040. In the early stages of dementia many people live independently but, as dementia advances, living well requires increased levels of support and care. People at the advanced stage of the illness are particularly vulnerable and their needs may be complicated by communication difficulty, pain and behaviour that carers find difficult to understand. This can result in poor quality of care as the person with dementia cannot communicate their needs and preferences. At the advanced stage, people with dementia and their family need to be supported by a qualified and confident care workforce, who is both evidence informed and supported to continually develop their practice. Workforce training, commitment to good quality continuing care and services for people living with dementia are WHO priorities. Education for care staff and partnership working with families is recognised at strategic and policy level across Europe. However, the reality is that research and training on advanced dementia is scarce. This highlights the importance, in the face of the rising incidence of dementia, for accessible education to support and manage care for people with advanced dementia, making use of modern technology, communication and networking to support learning in a virtual environment. The purpose of the paper was to present an overview of a European Union Erasmus + funded two year project, ‘Palliare’ which began in September 2014. The project aims to collaboratively create a range of practice based and experiential online learning resources to support carers of people in the advanced stage of dementia. This will be facilitated through a virtual international Community of Practice – a learning environment where people with common interest come together to share and learn from each other, to meet pre-determined needs. This paper will focus on one of the activities from the Palliare project, the educational gap analysis of the qualified dementia workforce. This work will inform the development of the interprofessional learning modules. We will highlight the importance, and potential contribution, that this education can make in equipping the qualified dementia workforce to support advanced dementia care and family caring in the 21st century.