ACOMPANYEM: A COMmunity Program Accessing Lonely, Disabled Neighbors (Young, Elder, and Midlife)

Fundacio d'Investigacio en Atencio Primaria Jordi Gol i Gurina

Status: Not yet enrolling

Conditions: Homebound Persons; Disabled Persons; Social Isolation or Loneliness

Treatments: Behavioral: Multileveled-community approach

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT06606431

24/095-P (Ethics Committee nº)

Details and patient eligibility

About

Social prescription prioritizes interventions for people at risk of social isolation or unwanted loneliness based on community assets and offers them a series of activities that can contribute to their emotional well-being as a healthy alternative to medicalized healthcare. Disabled homebound people deal with more difficulty accessing the social health assets available in the community. Volunteers from the same neighborhood may accomplish the social function of accompaniment and listening accessing them at home or walking them out to attain social prescription goals. The Community Emotional Well-Being Referent (REBEC) may enhance all of this by conducting emotional counseling and management groups for volunteers.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effectiveness of a community intervention of accompaniment and emotional management with volunteers on the unwanted loneliness of people with social isolation, their emotional well-being, and their quality of life.

METHODOLOGY: a community-based quasi-experimental non-randomized pre-post intervention study with control group, and a qualitative study. Candidate detection by the Driving Group, composed of neighborhood organizations and the community health team, was conducted opportunistically. Recruitment of isolated individuals and volunteers was carried out, with registration based on inclusion criteria. Implementation of the multi-level intervention for volunteers and isolated individuals took place at home or by participating in community resources on the street, with parallel support groups for volunteers using REBEC. Each round of participants was followed for three months, continuing until the sample was complete. Qualitative analysis was conducted upon reaching information saturation. In cases where architectural barriers were detected, technical aids (such as portable stairlifts) were proposed, and their impact was studied.

Enrollment: 8 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 16+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

Previously detected by community and professional assets among people over 16 years of age with the following criteria:

• Disabled physical or mental homebound persons.
• Unwanted loneliness, with difficulty in accessing other assets of the social prescription program.
• less than 8 on the Oslo Social Support Scale or less than 20 on the LSNS-R scale or less than 2 on the LSNR-6 scale in people over 65 years of age.

Exclusion criteria

• Impossibility of communication
• End-of-life situations.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Supportive Care

Allocation: Non-Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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8 participants in 2 patient groups

Participant Group

Experimental group

Description:

The intervention is multilevel and is based on bringing together two population groups in the community with complementary needs: 1. People over 16 years of age isolated at home due to mobility problems or chronic mental illness. 2. Volunteers from the neighborhood, especially people with interested in improving their emotional well-being. REBEC will conduct a first individual interview to confirm that the volunteers are emotionally and vitally stable at the time of the intervention. A personalized relational dynamic of help will be set up in each case (one-to-one interaction, relational level). This interaction can consist of listening at home or going with the person on the street to bring them closer to the different proposals for community social activities. The group of social isolation and/or unwanted loneliness will also receive support from the community team, to provide a personalized response to the physical, health, social or psychological needs detected by the v

Treatment:

Behavioral: Multileveled-community approach

Control Group

No Intervention group

Description:

In-waiting list for intervention in future rounds; habitual care