Possible courses of caregiver's support in Alzheimer's disease

The Legos (a laboratory specialized on health economics at Dauphine University, Paris) conducted a detailed survey at three daycare centres for persons suffering from Alzheimer's disease in France, Germany and Spain, to examine in depth their objectives, organization, practices and relations to patients' families. Though it proved difficult to establish a true typology, the analysis showed that the support provided to caregivers by the daycare centres were responding to three main approaches: one aimed at stimulating or keeping the cognitive abilities of the patients; a second one based on the remaining autonomy of the patients and striving to improve the provided home cares and services, in order to avoid or postpone a departure to a nursing home; the last one dealing with the socialization of the patients through an action on the strong relationship with their family. The survey, as well as the study of the available literature published in English and French on the day care centres, also stressed that some delicate questions were not getting the thorough attention they deserve; e.g. the interaction between what is going on in the day care centre and the life outside the centre, the management of the transition between the day care centre and home when the patient returns, the information and professional training of the carers (formal and informal), the various financial aspects of caregivers' support and of attendance at a daycare centre and, last but not least, the different ways of taking into consideration the opinion and the quality of life of the patients.