Evidence-Based Supported Digital Intervention for Improving Wellbeing and Health of people living in Care Homes (WHELD) During COVID-19

The COVID-19 crisis is severely affecting care staff and the 400,000 older people living in care homes. Care home residents include the frailest members of society, many with dementia, mental and physical health symptoms. Care home staff are finding it challenging to provide support in these times and they face an increasingly difficult and distressing work environment. We urgently need to support care staff and provide the best environment possible for care home residents. Our care home training (WHELD) has shown benefits in two large clinical trials; and we have also demonstrated benefits from a digital version, incorporating virtual supervision in a new trial. We will optimise this programme by adapting it for the COVID crisis, to include peer networking and solution sharing. This will add to the person-centred approach, enhanced activities and reduction in sedative medications that the current WHELD programme already achieves. This digital intervention with virtual supervision will be available to 160 care homes within 4 weeks. We will further improve eWHELD based on benefits, feedback and barriers to implementation, make it available to almost 1500 care homes during the programme and ensure that it is ready to roll out to all UK care homes.