I-Can-Do : Developing Digital Accessibility for the Dementia Volunteer Service using Co-Design, 2023-2024

Niedderer, Kristina and Fung, Pui Ling and Orton, Laura (2025). I-Can-Do : Developing Digital Accessibility for the Dementia Volunteer Service using Co-Design, 2023-2024. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Service. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-857475

With rising numbers of cases, dementia is a key health priority. With no cure, there is a need for psychosocial interventions, especially at the early stages, to help people maintain their health, wellbeing and independence as long as possible. The challenge for supporting people at the early stages of dementia is in providing an individualised and tailored offer of activities in their local community that meets their interests and needs, that is not perceived at stigmatising, and that allows them to make a contribution for which they feel valued.
The IDoService offers such a novel and innovative programme. It supports people with a recent diagnosis of dementia in identifying, participating and contributing to social activities in their community by connecting them to local volunteer services. The Service is built around a core 3-session plan, delivered by the wellbeing mentor, which allows people to explore their strengths and interests, get to know what is available locally and to decide what they want to do in a safe and convivial way. We have successfully trialled the service with Age UK Salford in 2022. We propose now to develop an interactive digital version to make it more user-friendly and easily scalable.

Data description (abstract)

Dementia is a key health priority. With no cure, there is a need for psychosocial interventions at the early stages, to help people maintain their health, wellbeing and independence as long as possible. The ICanDo Service allows people living with mild dementia to plan, connect with and participate in tailored volunteering opportunities to realise themselves and stay connected to the society. While we successfully trialled the service in 2022, we identified two shortcomings:

1. The previous I-Can-Do Service model helped to identify participants interests, but provided limited support to participants during volunteering. The research revealed that the implementation of the ICanDo Service requires a number of further support measures, including training, assistance and regular reviews to support and safeguard participants of the service appropriately.

2. The physical booklet used in the sessions was not fully utilised. As a result, the recommendation arose to develop a complementary interactive digital version of the booklet to enable sharing notes and actions with all relevant users and stakeholders involved in delivering the service.

The aims of this project were to co-develop the ICanDo Service model and an interactive digital workbook to make it more accessible, user-friendly and scalable. This project is made up of two parts:

1. The full-service model and the ICanDo Service trial.

2. The development of the digital prototype.

Co-design is an approach that actively involves all relevant stakeholders to develop design ideas, make design decisions, and develop workable products. The underlying idea is to design with all stakeholders to help sure the result meets their needs and is usable. Insights from the previous sessions were presented in subsequent co-design sessions to explore speculative design ideas in an iterative process. 11 co-design sessions were conducted with people with dementia, care partners, care and volunteer professionals and those with volunteering experience.

This Open Access folder includes all data generated for the development of the digital prototype and the full-service model.

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