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ºù«ÍÞÊÓƵ Meeting Centres

A Meeting Centre is a local resource, operating out of ordinary community buildings, that offers on-going warm and friendly expert and peer support to people with mild to moderate dementia and their families. At the heart of the Meeting Centre is a social club where people meet to have fun, talk to others and get help that focusses on what they need. Meeting Centres are based on sound research evidence on what helps people to cope well in adjusting to living with the symptoms and changes that dementia brings.

Further information about this project can be found on the dedicated page here

Namaste Care

Namaste Care is a multi-component sensory intervention for people with advanced dementia and at end of life. It is person-centred, relationship-based care that combines elements of best practice dementia care with best practice palliative care.

We were pleased to receive funding from the Marie Curie Research Impact Fund to develop and pilot an online course to support care home staff to implement Namaste Care. The course was developed in conjunction with the NEAR charity (), professionals in the field, and people with lived experience, to ensure that the course captured a range of different perspectives. It also incorporates findings and resources from our previous Namaste Care Intervention ºù«ÍÞÊÓƵ research project.

A is available, and if you are interested please contact us at dementia@worc.ac.uk for details about dates, costs and registration. If you would like to explore options for having the course delivered for your organisation or group we would also encourage you to get in touch.

More information about Namaste Care is available .

Crossing the Line

 

Personal care includes helping with going to the toilet, washing, bathing, dressing, mouth-care, shaving, haircare, foot and nail-care. Family carers that support people with dementia have told us that the issue of personal care is very important to them, though our research has shown that little is known about it in the context of dementia and family care.

Family carers face challenges adapting to the change in role that providing personal care brings, and this is worsened by lack of skills, know-how, shame and embarrassment. As their dementia progresses, the person with dementia may be increasingly unaware of their need for help or the impact it has on their family, and this leads to high levels of distress, causing physical and emotional harm both to themselves and their family carer. The challenges around personal care are often a tipping point for the person living with dementia to move into a care home. 

The research team carried out a survey and personal interviews with a diverse range of family carers from across the ºù«ÍÞÊÓƵ, to develop a deep understanding of the experiences of family carers relating to their provision of personal care to people living with dementia. That understanding enabled the research team to develop resources that will help families to cope with the challenges that they face. 

The resources can be accessed for free  and include a series of 15 booklets and video clips from family carers sharing their own experiences and advice on what helped them. We are also working on translating the booklets into Welsh and formulating an idea for a follow-on project to improve dissemination and reach.

 

Crossing the Line was supported by the National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR) under its Research for Patient Benefit Programme.

Holdenhurst Community Link Worker Evaluation

Holdenhurst in Heathfield, East Sussex is a newly built Abbeyfield enhanced sheltered housing scheme for people aged 60. The Community Link Worker (CLW) role was developed to enable tenants to enjoy an enriched lifestyle, reduce the impact of loneliness and improve their well-being.

Funded by the Abbeyfield Research Foundation, we evaluated the role of the CLW role in the context of the Holdenhurst community. Among other aims, we wanted to understand the key barriers, facilitators, successes, and challenges in setting up the CLW role and identify potential improvements going forwards, find out the impacts of the CLW role on the lives of tenants particularly in relation to improved welfare and decreased loneliness, and evaluate the impact of the CLW role on tenants and staff.

Championing Physical Activity for People Affected by Dementia

 

This innovative project developed and successfully piloted an online short course to upskill practitioners from across social care, leisure and sport to deliver more physical activity opportunities for people affected by dementia. You can read more about the project here and a short video about the pilot course is also available .

Further iterations of the course have already been delivered and we will be running the course at different times in the future. Please see  for more information and contact us at dementia@worc.ac.uk for details about dates, costs and registration. If you would like to explore options for having the course delivered for your organisation or group we would also encourage you to get in touch.

The project was funded by and the Leisure Studies Association.

Supporting People Living with Dementia in Extra Care Housing (DemECH)

The Supporting People Living with Dementia in Extra Care Housing (DemECH) project was an 18-month study funded by  and used a mixed methods approach to explore how Extra Care Housing can help people to live well with dementia.

Please use the following links to find out more about the Project, about the Team, and about the Advisory Group.

Three free booklets have been developed to provide key insights from this research project, and are aimed at different audiences:

In addition, an infographic and three short videos have also been produced to help share the findings in different formats. All of these free resources can be found .

Get Real with Meeting Centres: A realist evaluation of locally-driven social care for those affected by dementia

The Association for Dementia Studies was awarded funding for this two-year project by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) under its . It used a realist approach to gather together learning from three well-established Meeting Centres in Droitwich Spa, Leominster and Powys on how they have overcome challenges to keep going long term, beyond their initial start-up phase, in a climate where such initiatives are often forced to fold after only a short period.

A Meeting Centre is a local resource, operating out of ordinary community buildings, that offers on-going warm and friendly expert and peer support to people with mild to moderate dementia and their families. At the heart of the Meeting Centre is a social club where people meet to have fun, talk to others and get help that focusses on what they need. Meeting Centres are based on sound research evidence on what helps people to cope well in adjusting to living with the symptoms and changes that dementia brings.

The Get Real research aimed to uncover the cause-and-effect factors at play – how context (background circumstances) can trigger mechanisms (processes within people and organisations) to produce desirable or undesirable outcomes that have a bearing on whether a Meeting Centre can keep going long term. It builds on an  which built a complex theory about this based on a review of the literature and stakeholder opinion. By learning more about the particular challenges facing the Meeting Centres in the study, we hoped to develop better strategies to overcome those challenges – and to make recommendations to others across the ºù«ÍÞÊÓƵ.

 

The Get Real resources, in the form of a series of free booklets and short videos, can be found on the .

Worcester Life Stories

Keeping connected is important for our health, with some studies suggesting that the impact of isolation and loneliness on health, functional decline and mortality are of the same magnitude as such risk factors as obesity and smoking. Initial evidence suggests that interventions to reduce loneliness may provide health benefits, and previous projects have shown that life story work helps to keep people with dementia connected with their communities.

In this context, the Worcester Life Stories project aimed to bring together health and heritage in a unique way by co-producing two independent, but connecting, online platforms:

Know Your Place Worcester

Know Your Place Worcester is based on a bespoke website developed by Bristol City Council called Know Your Place. Hosted by Worcester City Council, Know Your Place Worcester allows people to explore their neighbourhood through historic maps, images and linked information, and to share their own memories and images. It consists of a map-based database of over 35,000 digitised historic images from the Worcester City Council Historic Environment Record (HER). The platform has scope to hold further collections and continue to evolve and expand, enabling users to learn more about their area or specific parts of Worcester that they have a connection with.

Members of the public can also upload their own photographs, written and oral memories. The platform can be used independently or collaboratively within families or community groups, and it is hoped that it will initiate social media conversations with other residents of Worcester developing new contacts and networks. The Know Your Place Worcester website is free to use and open to everyone -

Life Stories Herefordshire and Worcestershire

Hosted by Herefordshire and Worcestershire Care and Health NHS Trust, Life Stories Herefordshire and Worcestershire is an online platform that allows anyone living in either Herefordshire or Worcestershire to create their own digital life story book. Using a flexible template, users can download images and memories from Know Your Place Worcester and upload their own materials. People may choose to develop their life story with others, share it within families and friendship groups and/or allow it to be used within community groups, care homes and hospitals for example.

Life Packs are also available on the website, which contain resources around a common theme. These can be used outside of the Life Story books, for example to facilitate reminiscence sessions, or content can be linked to a life story.

All residents in Worcestershire and Herefordshire can create their own digital life story book for free, but you do have to register on the site to be able to do this or to view a shared book. Life Packs are available and free to all. You can find the life stories and life packs here -

Evaluation

The Association for Dementia Studies was commissioned by Historic England to evaluate the experiences and views of individuals and community groups who use the two web-based platforms. 

A for the two platforms is also available. 

You can keep up-to-date with developments for both platforms on the