News and events

No related news items found.

Search our news archive

Launch of MP3 project

Congratulations to Dr. Margaret Winbolt and Dr. Michael Bauer who led a team from the Australian Institute for Primary Care & Ageing on a project undertaken in collaboration with Southern Cross Care (Victoria).

The project looked at the effect on carers of providing an MP3 player with personalised content to be used by people living with dementia.

The project grew out of SCC’s desire to undertake a robust evaluation to confirm their anecdotal evidence about the effectiveness of innovative practice of one of their dementia consultants – Ben Gatehouse. SCC approached Margaret and Michael to form a partnership with La Trobe to undertake the evaluation. Findings from the study provided quantitative and qualitative evidence that a simple intervention like this could lead to significant benefits for carers in terms of their mental health and their ability to cope with the challenges of caring.

There has been a lot of interest in the study. SCC organised a public launch of the study findings yesterday at which Margaret and Jan (a carer who used the MP3 player) spoke about the results of the study to an audience of 140 people with an interest in caring for people living with dementia. The well-known musician, and spokesman for Alzheimer’s Australia Victoria, Mark Seymour also spoke about his experiences and sang a few songs.

Coverage of the launch by Channel 10 is available at: http://ten.com.au/ten-news-melbourne.htm?vid=2645798361001

You can read more about the study at: http://journalofdementiacare.com/music-program-hits-the-right-note-2/