Projects

BRIEF

Dementia Australia is the national peak body for people, of all ages, living with all forms of dementia, as well as their families and carers. There are more than 472,000 Australians living with dementia and an estimated 1.6 million involved in their care.

Connecting Peers is one of Dementia Australia’s newest programs. It offers free one-on-one peer support for people living with dementia and their carers.

NSF Consulting was commissioned by Dementia Australia to evaluate Connecting Peers during its establishment phase, to help support the organisation achieve timely improvements and refinements of the program to meet key service aims.

APPROACH

The evaluation was designed to explore the appropriateness, effectiveness and efficiency of Connecting Peers. Natalie worked with Dementia Australia executive staff to develop a program logic model and evaluation framework. Then, in-depth interviews were conducted with 46 people from across Australia, including 32 program participants, 10 Dementia Australia staff and four representatives of other peer support programs to contextualise Connecting Peers in the landscape of best practice peer support.

A streamlined evaluation report was prepared which included a summary of recommendations for Dementia Australia.