Abstract
BackgroundDay care is an important service for many people with dementia and their carers. In Ireland, day care services for people with dementia are delivered by a mix of dementia-specific day care centres as well as generic day care centres that cater for people with dementia to various degrees. In this paper we examine the geographic distribution of day care services for people with dementia relative to potential need.MethodsUsing a national survey of day care centres, we estimate the current availability of day care services for people with dementia in the country. We use geographic information systems (GIS) to map day care provision at regional and sub-regional levels and compare this to the estimated number of people with dementia in local areas.ResultsThere is significant variation across the country in the existing capacity of day care centres to cater for people with dementia. The number of places per 100 persons with dementia in the community varies from 14.2 to 21.3 across Community Health Organisation areas. We also show that 18% of people with dementia do not live within 15kms of their nearest day care centre.ConclusionCurrently, day care centres, in many parts of the country, have limited capacity to provide a service for people with dementia who live in their catchment area. As the number of people with dementia increases, investment in day care centres should be targeted to areas where need is greatest. Our GIS approach provides valuable evidence that can help inform decisions on future resource allocation and service provision in relation to day care.
Highlights
Day care is an important service for many people with dementia and their carers
We look at availability within each of these regions to identify sub regions (Community Health Networks, CHNs) with the lowest availability
To show the areas of CHNs where access is likely to be more difficult, we identified electoral district (ED) where the centroid was more than 15 kms along the road network from a day care centre; this represents the outer boundary of acceptable journey times for a bus collection service
Summary
Day care is an important service for many people with dementia and their carers. In Ireland, day care services for people with dementia are delivered by a mix of dementia-specific day care centres as well as generic day care centres that cater for people with dementia to various degrees. Attending a day care centre provides the opportunity for social interaction and a sense of structure and routine [9, 10], and day care has been shown to provide people with dementia with a range of benefits. These include: increased wellbeing [7, 11]; better sleeping habits [11, 12]; reduced neuropsychiatric symptoms and use of psychotropic drugs [12, 13]; and, reduced family carer stress [14, 15]. Having access to day care can improve the relationship between the carer and the person with dementia by providing time apart and facilitating employment [5]
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