Project Dementia Capacity Assessment

2014. The number of people with dementia is growing and will keep on growing. People with dementia live at home for longer. The surroundings are also increasingly confronted with dementia: not only care professionals, family and voluntary carers, but also people who work in the catering and retail sectors. How is dementia care doing? Where can opportunities for development be found? An online research instrument has been developed and deployed for formulating answers to these questions.

Focus of the project

The aim of the project was two-fold:

1. To map out dementia’s work territory in Limburg (NL). To this end, a capacity assessment tool has been developed. A unique aspect of this tool was the specific attention paid to Euregional collaboration.
2. The research tool was developed in such a way that it can be used after the project has ended, also in different work fields.

Study into dementia’s work territory

20 stakeholders in dementia’s work territory throughout Limburg (NL) were approached for the study. The study that was carried out involved both quantitative and qualitative research methods. The general conclusion is that efficient dementia care chains are operating in the Netherlands. However, there is no structural collaboration between organisations in Limburg and similar organisations within the EMR  (Euregio Meuse-Rhine). The research report is only available in Dutch.

Online tool

Development of the research tool took future use into account:

• An online tool for independent use was available at the end of the project.
• This tool can be used for health care topics and in other sectors (such as economics, the environment, culture).
• This tool is suitable for organisations throughout the entire Euregio Meuse-Rhine (EMR)
  • the tool takes into account the euregional way of working and thinking,
  • the tool can be used in all regions and is available in the languages of the Euregio Meuse-Rhine (EMR)

Capacity assessment

The University of Maastricht was commissioned to develop a research tool that could be deployed euregionally. They based their development on a framework for capacity research of the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme). There are three steps:

1. A Capacity Assessment is carried out to map out the current situation (Where are you right now?).
2. Once this is clear, the next question involves the desired capacity (Where do you want to be?).
3. After this, aims for developing capacity can be formulated (Capacity Development). Working towards these aims increases the level of capacity.

The framework ensures the formulation of development goals at the level of individuals, organisations and society. This tool works only on development at the level of organisations. The topic ‘dementia’ is approached as a broad problem within society.