Large trial to test CareCoach
What is the CareCoach Study?
The CareCoach Study is a large clinical trial designed to find out whether CareCoach benefits family carers of people living with dementia.
Caring for someone with dementia can be rewarding, but it can also be challenging. CareCoach aims to help carers develop the knowledge, skills and confidence they need to support a person living with dementia while also looking after their own wellbeing.
The aim of this study is to test the effects of using CareCoach which is an online support package for carers. In other words, the study will test whether CareCoach has an effect on carer’s sense of being able to care well, their mood and quality of life. We must test this before we can make it available to people across the UK.
The study is also evaluating whether CareCoach represents good value for money for health and care services.
What does taking part involve?
The study aims to recruit 404 family carers from across the UK.
Participants are randomly allocated to one of two groups:
- CareCoach group: participants receive CareCoach with support from a trained coach over 8 weeks. Participants in this group still received usual care.
- Usual care group: participants continue to access the support normally available through health, social care and voluntary services. They are offered access to CareCoach materials after completing the study.
Participants are involved in the study for six months, and all study activities can be completed remotely.
Who can take part?
Recruitment for this study has now closed, as we have reached our required number of volunteers/participants.
What will the study tell us?
The trial will help us understand whether CareCoach is effective, acceptable and cost-effective. The findings will inform decisions about whether CareCoach should be made more widely available to carers in the future.
Learn more
Study protocol (coming soon)
The protocol describes how the trial was designed, conducted and analysed.
Trial registration
The trial registration provides information about the study objectives, design, eligibility criteria and outcomes being measured.
The trial registry is particularly useful because it shows that the study was planned in advance and records the outcomes that researchers intended to measure before seeing the results. You can view it here.
Study status: Recruitment and follow-up have now been completed. We are collecting the final data and analysis will begin December 2026 with results expected in Spring 2027.
