CHAD’s October seminar was held at the Kingston Centre in Stafford. At this seminar, Dr Rachel Massie, Research Officer at CHAD, shared the findings from the Thinking Active pilot project completed earlier this year. The presentation gave an insight into the programme and the feedback received from the care-givers and service providers involved.
Thinking Active is a multi-modal community based intervention designed by Staffordshire County Council to slow the onset of dementia for people with an early diagnosis. CHAD explored the feasibility of delivering and evaluating Thinking Active in community settings using a mixed methods approach.
You can view/download the presentation slides here.
Thank you to Staffordshire County Council and Sport and Across Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent for organising and supporting the
pilot and evaluation.
The three main recommendations from the evaluation were about:
Recruitment – how to increase recruitment of suitable individuals to the programme using targeted marketing approaches and building relationships/rapport with relevant organisations.
Programme delivery – improve the information provided to participants and care-givers to make expectations clear at the start of the programme and provide additional practical training for staff to increase confidence.
Further research – to explore stakeholders’ views of referring to Thinking Active and any differences between community settings and types of physical activity delivered.
The presentation prompted a great discussion around next steps and how other organisations could get involved with the development of a larger scale study in the future. Watch this space for further developments.
The full report is now available to read on our website and can be downloaded here.
