Background and aims:
People with stroke often struggle with multiple daily physical and psychosocial challenges after even a mild stroke, which reduced their participation and health-related quality of life. Self-management education is recommended to enhance post-stroke recovery. However, studies found that people with stroke have lower self-efficacy when engaging in self-care and there had been limited individual support. This abstract reported the preliminary impact of a self-management education and support package for people with stroke.

Methods:
An evidence-based, individual, home-based support package comprising a stroke self-management programme (COMBO-KEY) and a virtual stroke care clinic (VMSCC) was delivered for community-dwelling people with stroke. The COMBO-KEY and VMSCC have shown significant improvements in self-efficacy, self-management behaviours, and psychosocial outcomes among people with stroke in randomised controlled trials. Informed by the study results, the two programmes were jointly offered as a support package offering individualised and home-based support for people with mild to moderate disability after stroke. Ten lay volunteers who were undergraduate students and four peer stroke volunteers completed the training, and they were assigned to support the package delivery under supervision by a registered nurse. Education on stroke self-management management was provided in forms of face-to-face discussions, animated videos, and a self-learning guidebook. Mutually agreed goals and action plans were also developed to enable self-practise of the newly acquired self-management skills. Qualitative feedback on the usefulness of the self-management education and support package was collected from the participating people with stroke, the volunteers and the registered nurse.

Results:
A total of 10 adults with either ischaemic or haemorrhagic stroke have completed the programme. Feedback from the adults with stroke was generally positive, appreciating for the easy-to-understand information on self-management. They appreciated for the pragmatic lifestyle strategies and step-by-step guidance suggested by the team that increased their confidence in their capability in participating in daily life activities. The volunteers and the registered nurse were more concerned about useful strategies to provide the self-management education specific to the person’s health needs and literacy. They summarised that setting and reviewing goals weekly, facilitating thinking about alternative ways to perform a task, providing verbal reinforcement on incremental success were most helpful strategies. They described that being patient, innovative and positive were attributes for better continuous support to people with stroke in self-management. Regular training and updates on providing self-management support was also needed to enhance their confidence in package delivery.

Conclusions:
The preliminary impact of the support package was positive, and it will continue to be offered to people with stroke in the community together with ongoing training for volunteers, expecting to expand the preliminary positive impact.

Keywords: Stroke, self-management education, volunteers.