From the welcome session on the evening of Tuesday 6th November through to the final session on Thursday 8th, ADS was well represented at this year’s UK Dementia Congress in Brighton. We were this year’s academic partner for the event and also had an exhibition stand to help us connect with everyone.
As usual, the congress covered a wide variety of topics relating to dementia including acute hospital care, housing, arts, young onset dementia, late stage dementia, care homes, home support, technology, environments, sexuality, and staff development. While each session could generate its own blog post the ADS team members who were in Brighton couldn’t get to everything. So, this blog aims to give a flavour of UKDC by providing a bit more information on the sessions we were directly involved with.
First up, after being introduced by Professor Dawn Brooker, Isabelle Latham and Chris Russell had the challenge of summing up in just five minutes how being both researchers and practitioners affects their approach.
The Meeting Centre Support Programme project had its own dedicated symposium facilitated by Professor Dawn Brooker and Dr Shirley Evans, together with Mike Watts. Although it will be reported in more detail in a separate blog in the future, it provided a great opportunity for the audience to hear about Meeting Centres directly from the staff and members involved.
Professor Dawn Brooker had the honour of delivering the Tom Kitwood Memorial Address. The session considered the upcoming publication of ‘Dementia re-considered, revisited: The person still comes first’ which includes and provides a new perspective on Tom Kitwood’s original work from 1997. Dawn shared the stage with several authors who contributed to the new book (Professor Julian Hughes, Keith Oliver, Reinhard Guss, Ruth Elvish and Professor Claire Surr), and even those who were unable to attend in person like Christine Bryden who had pre-recorded a short video.
Christine Carter presented on work she has carried out with Dementia UK’s Suzanne Wightman. Admiral Nurses undertaking the Level 7 module ‘Working with people with dementia – Applying the Admiral Nursing Competency Framework’ run by Christine here at the University of Worcester were encouraged to develop their critical reflection skills by taking part in a letter writing exercise. The exercise involved thinking about a family they were working with, reflecting on their interactions and the strengths seen within the family relationship. The Admiral Nurses then wrote down their thoughts in the form of a letter to a family member. While the letters were not actually sent, the process was found to be extremely powerful and emotional.
Sarah Waller and Isabelle Latham both took part in panel sessions considering acute hospitals and pressing issues in dementia care respectively, with Izzie later having the opportunity to present her PhD during a session on staff development in care homes. During a talk entitled ‘Learning to care or learning what to care about?’, Izzie reported the results from her PhD which investigates the different ways of learning for care workers in care homes for people living with dementia.
Michal Herz led a symposium on ‘Supporting people in the home environment’ in which she presented on the use of live-in caregivers. She was joined by Becky Oatley who presented on her PhD looking at sport reminiscence for people with dementia, fellow PhD student Chris Russell who is exploring the experiences of people with dementia who use leisure centres, and our new Professor Tracey Williamson who considered the impact of life events resulting in a role reversal situation where a person with dementia can end up as the carer for their own family carer.
During the final parallel session of the congress, Nicola Jacobson-Wright and Faith Frost shared initial findings from the Namaste Care project. The project has developed a Namaste Care UK Intervention based on Joyce Simard’s US Namaste Care programme. Following training, six care homes have been delivering the Namaste Care UK Intervention, acting as case study sites to evaluate the facilitators and barriers to implementation. An on-going project, final reporting is due next year.
Additionally, several members of the team chaired various sessions, giving us a good opportunity to get a real feel for the range of work currently being undertaken in the field of dementia care. It was also a great networking event, creating new connections with individuals and organisations, and renewing existing relationships.
Thanks to the Journal of Dementia Care for a great event as always. Many thanks too to everyone from ADS who was involved in this year’s event, not just those team members who attended and presented, but also those who helped plan, organise and get everything ready back here at the University of Worcester.
Association for Dementia Studies Blog 