Overview

Objectives

1. (Primary)To estimate the potential effects of the cooking program on the people with MCI/dementia and their informal caregivers;
2. To investigate if the potential effects can be maintained after the completion of the program.

Study design and participants:

A convenience sample of 68 pair older adults with MCI/dementia and their informal caregivers from the Chef Anchor 3.0 Programme will be referred to the research team. Overall, participants will be assigned to intervention group and waitlist control group in a ratio of 1:1. Allocation will take into account the participants' availability and the programme capacity. Assessors of outcomes and data analyst will be blinded throughout the whole study.

During the first 10 weeks, the intervention group will undergo the 10-week programme in the "Chef Anchor 3.0", while no activity for the waitlist control group. Then, from week 10 to 20, the waitlist control group will attend the same 10-week programme.

Measurements

Main outcome measures for people with MCI/dementia will include confidence in cooking (Primary), cooking capability, satisfaction with autonomy in cooking, Satisfaction with meal choices, Worried about future cooking ability and meal choices, cognitive function, self-reported appetite, psychological well-being, family harmony and satisfaction, as well as self-rated health.

Outcome measures for informal caregivers will include confidence in care recipient' s cooking, worried about future cooking ability and meal choices of care recipient, caregiver burden, psychological well-being, family harmony and satisfaction, as well as self-rated health.

Other measures will include attendance rate, home practice rate, drop-out rate, programme satisfaction, and recommendation to others.

Hypotheses

1. The confidence in cooking, cooking capability, satisfaction with autonomy in cooking, satisfaction with meal choices, worried about future cooking ability and meal choices, cognitive function, self-reported appetite, psychological well-being, family satisfaction, and self-rated health of older adults with MCI/dementia would improve after the programme;
2. The confidence in care recipient's cooking, worried about future cooking ability and meal choices of care recipient, psychological well-being, family satisfaction, caregiver burden, and self-rated health of informal caregivers would improve after the programme;
3. The 10-week programme is acceptable for the most of older adults with MCI/dementia and their informal caregivers.

Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria:

i. Aged 60 or above;

ii. Diagnosed by medical doctor has having MCI/dementia as reported by the older adults or their informal caregivers, or with reported subjective decline of cognitive function and with 5-min MoCA score ≤7th age- and education-specific percentile (Wong et al., 2015);

iii. Ability to follow simple instructions;

iv. Adequate physical strength to attend cooking workshops.

Exclusion Criteria:

i. Without caregiver