A few years ago the Association for Dementia Studies carried out a research project to help care homes implement and deliver Namaste Care to provide better care for people living with advanced dementia. It was a great project to work on, and ever since we’ve been looking for opportunities to take that work further to see the positive results replicated in more care homes and other settings. We’re delighted to say that thanks to funding from the Marie Curie Research Impact Fund, we’re now in a position to do just that!
For those who may not be aware, Namaste Care in a multi-component sensory intervention for people with advanced dementia and at end of life. Namaste Care is person-centred, relationship-based care that combines elements of best practice dementia care with best practice palliative care. Residents are brought together in a specifically prepared room or space that is set-up to stimulate the five senses through music, massage, food and drink treats, life-story and reminiscence work, alongside pain assessment, family meetings and end-of-life planning. Namaste Care is an integral part of care delivery rather than an add-on activity.
In our new project, we will be developing, delivering and evaluating a fully-online short course to support staff and families to implement Namaste Care in their settings. It aims to provide not just an education opportunity for care teams, but also ongoing support and resources to encourage the sustainability of Namaste Care in care settings around the UK.
For this, we’ll be collaborating closely with colleagues from the NEAR charity (Namaste Care Education and Resources) who are focused on supporting the sustainability of Namaste Care and providing ongoing support and resources. We’ll also be working with a range of professionals in the field and people with lived experience, to ensure there is specialist contribution on topics within the Namaste Care course.
Over the summer we’ll be beavering away to design and create the course content, before uploading it onto our virtual learning platform. Our aim is to pilot, evaluate and review the course later in the year, before making the course widely available at cost for future cohorts. Ultimately, we hope this project will result in an evidence-based and affordable online education provision which is accessible to a wide range of care organisations. It is hoped that with repeat iterations of the training, more care settings will be enabled to embed Namaste Care into their usual care provision, and improve the experience of people with advanced dementia and their end-of-life care.
If you would like to find out more, please contact the project lead Nicola Jacobson-Wright (n.jacobson@worc.ac.uk). In the meantime, here’s a reminder of one of the outputs from our previous research, a poem created by John Killick using the words of people with dementia attending Namaste Care sessions.
![image showing the following poem: Namaste Poem Written by residents from Azalea Court with the help of John Killick. It seemed to be about sitting quietly. I think it was rather good. It’s a change from the noisy things we need to get away from. It’s nice and cosy, isn’t it? That we can sit here in peace and quiet and hopefully be safe. I like the speciality. We had some fun today, especially the bubbles. We do get lots of laughter, and I join in. The people who run it have obviously created an interesting situation. it does seem to work.]](https://adsdementiablog.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/poem-1.png?w=537)
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