Over the years we’ve produced a number of different resources – not including journal articles and project reports – so we thought it might be useful to provide a quick overview in case any of them are useful to you in your work and/or personal lives. Most of them are free to access or download, but obviously the books would need to be paid for. Where a cost is associated this is indicated and a relevant link is provided.
Dementia Reconsidered, Revisited
In 1997 ‘Dementia Reconsidered: The Person Comes First’ by Tom Kitwood was published, and has continued to inspire people working in the dementia field. To reflect changes in our understanding of dementia since then, Dawn Brooker has edited an updated version, ‘Dementia Reconsidered, Revisited: The Person Still Comes First’. It’s an ideal text for anyone studying or working in nursing, medicine, psychiatry, psychology, occupational therapy, social work, adult education, gerontology, and health and social care more generally. This book is available to buy, for example from Amazon.
Person-Centred Dementia Care: Making Services Better with the VIPS Framework
Written by Dawn Brooker and Isabelle Latham, this book explores issues relating to person-centred care for people with dementia. It is based on the VIPS Framework, looking at how it can be applied in practice to improve care right from diagnosis through to end of life care. This book is available to buy, for example from Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Nursing & Health Dementia Care Survival Guide
This pocket-sized guide pulls together all of the crucial information on caring for patients with dementia and makes it available in one place. It was written by Dawn Brooker and Sue Lillyman, and covers areas such as:
- Person-centred dementia care
- Communication and managing behaviour
- Pain assessment
- Nutrition and medication
- Advanced care plans
- And much more
This book is available to buy, for example from Amazon.
- Care Fit for VIPS
Care Fit for VIPS is a free online tool based on the VIPS framework, which includes a self-assessment toolkit to help you see where you/your organisation are now, links to relevant resources to improve quality of dementia care, and a ‘Plan, Do, Study, Act’ template to help you make changes. We’ve already featured it in a couple of previous blogs, discussing the original version and our expanding range, so if you want to find out more you can have a look at those.
You do need to register to use the toolkit, but this short video clip should help if you get stuck. Other clips are also available to help you see how to carry out an assessment using the tool, and how to do a ‘Plan, Do, Study, Act’ cycle.
Stand by Me
This is a free online dementia training course which features a series of videos an associated questions based on the VIPS Framework, designed to encourage you to reflect on your own practice and the challenges you may face. The videos cover the patient journey from diagnosis to end of life care, and is suitable for all healthcare staff. You have to register for the course, which is hosted by Skills for Health, and you can access it here.
EHE assessment tools
Originally developed by The King’s Fund, we host a suite of five free environmental assessment tools covering care homes, health centres, hospitals, housing and wards. More detail is available in a previous blog, but these tools essentially prompt you to self-assess your setting from the perspective of a person with dementia and identify areas for improvement. We’re nearly ready to release updated versions following a recent review and refresh process, but you are still able to download the existing versions in the meantime.
Related to this, we’ve also got a free guide and checklist to make village halls dementia friendly. These were developed in conjunction with Community First as part of their One Step Out! Initiative, and you can access the guide and checklist here.
PIECE-Dem observation tool
A previous blog has talked about the PIECE-Dem observation tool, which is aimed at capturing the experiences of people with advanced dementia, so you can find out more about it here. You can’t access or download this resource directly as it cannot be used without training, so if you are interested in this tool we suggest that you get in touch with us to find out more dementia@worc.ac.uk
Namaste Care
As part of the Namaste Care Intervention UK project two guides were produced to help people implement Namaste Care. They are free to download:
COVID resources
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic members of the ADS team worked to develop a set of resources to help in various situations. They are all free to use and can be found on the ‘Useful resources’ page in this blog site. So far they cover:
- Care homes
- Domiciliary care
- Family and friends
- Community groups
- Grief and loss
- Activities and creative arts
Resources for Meeting Centres
Partly in response to COVID-19, but also because we thought it would be useful more generally, a range of resources have been brought together to support people running Meeting Centres. While most are not resources we have developed ourselves, some have been produced by ADS, including tips for running online support sessions, two creative and sensory activities booklets, a guide for family carers and friends, and a guide for community groups.
TAnDem creative arts booklets
Two of the resources within the COVID-19 resources and resources for Meeting Centres were actually produced by the TAnDem PhD students. These are the creative arts and sensory activity booklets, which can be downloaded for free and contain practice-based suggestions from arts practitioners.
Hopefully some of these resources will be useful for you, so feel free to have a look around and find which ones meet your needs.
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