Implementation of the Dutch Meeting Centres Support Program for people with dementia and their carers in Milan: process evaluation of the preparation phase.

Background & Aims: The Meeting Centres Support Programme (MCSP) for people with mild to moderately severe dementia and their carers proved effective in the Netherlands, and is now being implemented in other European countries. This study aimed to compare factors that at the preparation of two meeting centres in Italy were expected and experienced as facilitating or impeding implementation. Methods: At the start, stakeholders (n=19) filled in a checklist on expected facilitators and barriers. After opening the centres, experienced facilitators and barriers were inventoried in semi-structured interviews (n=13) and analysed by two independent researchers, using a Theoretical model on implementation. Additionally, minutes of the initiative group were investigated. Expected and experienced facilitators and barriers were compared. Results: In contrary to the expectations, the use of existing networks/collaboration between organizations facilitated the preparation phase. As expected, motivated stakeholders were facilitating. Shortening of the original time plan (for pragmatic reasons) was not expected, and made some preparatory tasks difficult to fulfil. Lack of Italian examples and cultural differences in working method made the realization of meeting centres difficult to imagine. Some experienced factors were not foreseen due to unexpected events. Conclusions: Most aspects of MCSP appeared well implementable in the Italian setting. Many factors were in line with the Dutch implementation study, new influencing factors were also found.