In April, we conducted 50 telephone-based semi-structured interviews with people with dementia and unpaid carers about their experiences of accessing social support services during the pandemic. In June/July, we conducted 20 follow-up interviews to see how these experiences might have changed. We have so far shown how detrimental the lack of social support service usage has been to people with dementia and carers, and how people with dementia have deteriorated much faster.

We also conducted a complementary, longitudinal, online and telephone based survey from April to August. We asked people with dementia, carers, and older adults about their social support service usage before the pandemic and at three time points, as well as about their mental health. So far, we have shown already how much reductions in service usage have been linked to poorer mental health.

4 papers already published:

https://bmcgeriatr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12877-020-01719-0 , https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13607863.2020.1822292 , https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/gps.5434

COVID-19-related social support service closures and mental well-being in older adults and those affected by dementia: a UK longitudinal survey | BMJ Open

Findings are summarized in: https://ltccovid.org/2021/01/18/covid-19-public-health-measures-and-their-impact-on-social-support-services-for-dementia-a-longitudinal-uk-survey/