Care needs and service use in older persons with dementia and depression in the context of European health and social care systems.

As the population is growing old, the professional and informal care of dementing elderly is a challenge which received the attention of scientific research in the past few years. Taking into account the demographic and social developments, this will even become more important and further research is necessary.
The proposed VIS project aims at relating the knowledge build up in the field of demention and care to the statements of other European research groups and from there to select questions which can only be fully answered within a European context, on the one hand at using the expertise of the various research groups, and on the other hand, the possibilities in respect of the diversity in the care for health and wellbeing which makes possible transnational research.
A project at the European level, in respect of the needs for care and the care use (and its determinants) in the framework of the different health and social care systems, will be prepared.
A comparison will be made of the instruments available in the different countries to measure a) the needs of both primary caregivers and dementing elderly in the field of information about services and the disease, psycho-educational and material support by professionals; b) the use of services and the satisfaction; c) the determinants of a help demand . The experience of our department in this area, of Mr M. Roelands and the participating Flemish and foreign research groups makes that the instruments are available and that one is acquainted with the research and analysis methods to be used.