1. Courses on dementia for immigrants in Norway
Inger Molvik, project manager
Thank you for the oppertunity to present our work at this conferance.
My name is Inger Molvik and I’m with the Norwegian National advisory Unit on Ageing and Health.

2. Background
Studies indicate a need for information and adaption of services towards family carers to immigrants with dementia. Cooperation with key persons and health personnel with immigrant background is important.
Relatives of elderly immigrants with dementia
Studies indicate a need for information and adaption of services towards family carers to immigrants with dementia and that cooperation with key persons and health personnel with immigrant background is important.
We also know that relatives to persons with dementia contributes with much care effort before applying for public assistance to the person with dementia. This applies especially for many immigrant communities, and they often demand a more family orientated approach from healthcare professionals.

3. Costomized model
As a part of Dementia Plan 2015/2020, on assignment by the Norwegian Directorate of Health, Norwegian National Advisory Unit on Ageing and Health organized courses in 2015/2017 for this target group in collaboration with Norwegian Centre for Migration and Minority Health and National Norwegian Association for Public Health.
In Norway family carers of persons with dementia have since early 1990s been offered to attend a course called pårørendskole (a school for family carer) in addition to others services within the dementia care. Over the years our experience is that its mainly participants with only Norwegian backgruound who attends these courses. So in order to make this avaliable for other ethnical groups we wanted to try out a costomized model of the courses in close collaboration with Norwegian Centre for Migration and Minority Health. And this was an assigment given by the Norwegian directorate of Health.

4. Aim
To develop and evaluate courses about dementia among family carers in Pakistani and Turkish immigrant communities.
So with these previous aspects in mind the aim of this project was to try out course models to be able to give infomation about dementia in a broader perspective within the spesific community and then again during the following course, give actual family care givers important knowledge about dementia and their role as carer. Also to give the participants the opportunity to share experiences is an important aspect here.

5. Methods
Broadly composed workgroups developed the design. Project assistants with Pakistani and Turkish background were engaged.
Broadly composed workgroups developed the design. Project assistants with Pakistani and Turkish background were engaged. Not only health personnel but also several other key persons such as politicians and taxidrivers with Pakistani/Turkish background were asked to spread information about the upcomming event.

6. Open meetings
Ahead of the courses an open information meeting on dementia was arranged for the Pakistani society in Oslo, and for the Turkish society in Drammen.
Ahead of the courses an open information meeting on dementia was arranged for the Pakistani comunity in Oslo, and for the Turkish comunity in Drammen. The meetings were held in a familiar enviroment and at a carfully picked weekday and timefame that we knew would be suiteble for the community. We wanted to invite a broad audiense and advises from the key persons were to put quite a lot of energy in finding the perfect spot and the perfect catering for food if we wanted people to come.

7. 3 meetings – 3 topics About dementia
Communication with persons with dementia
Legal rights and services
The courses consisted of three meetings with 3 topics: about dementia, Communication with persons with dementia and legal rights and services. The lectures were given partly in the mother language of participants and in Norwegian mediated by professional interpreters.
The participants completed a questionnaire after each meeting.
The meetings had a timeframe of 3 hours with a hot meel served at the end

8. Information material was translated to Urdu and Turkish, and quality assured by health personnel skilled in these languages.
The advertising meterial both for the open meeting and the following course where spread out in both Norwegian and Pakistani/Turkish. Also much of the information material about dementia were translate into these languages. We also searched the internet to find quality assured information in these spesific languages.

9. Results
Participants: Pakistani Turkish Open meeting: Courses on dementia: 77 25
In total 55 participants attended the open meeting with Pakistani background and 23 with Turkish background. In total, 77 (Pakistani) and 25 (Turkish) participants were registered on the following courses.
Totally 69 and 47 questionnaires were submitted. 97 percent considered the meetings to be useful and informative. Opportunity to share experiences, meet professionals and information material in their native languages were emphasized as important

10. Conclution
To increase knowledge of dementia among immigrant communities, linguistically adapted approaches are needed, from general information to more comprehensive courses. Cooperation with key persons and health personnel with immigrant background is valuable. It will be important in the future to develop and adapt information to immigrants’ native languages.
Summary The experience from this project has shown that to adapt information and support services to immigrant groups is needed. Many people have little knowledge of dementia and is often associated with stigma.
The take home message is to emfasize the importans of engaging key persons within the communities as well as local health personnel and other resourses localy to be able to recruit participants to both the open meeeting and the courses. It will be important to continue to develop and adapt information to immigrants’ native languages such as internet sites and illustrating films. We belive we have found a model that can be addapted into reaching other groups of immigrants and in others parts of Norway. We are in a process of developing an online program addressing health care personnel who wants to offer this to immigrants in their local communities.

11. Co-authors Inger Molvik, Project Manager, MSc
Kirsti Hotvedt, Project Co-ordinator, R.N. MPH
From the Norwegian Centre for Migration and Minority Health:
Ragnhild Storstein Spilker, Project manager Equity in Health Care, R.N. MPhil;
Emine Kale, Advisor/Specialist in clinical psychology
And finally I’d like to thank my co-authors for interesting collabaration and commitment.