Dementia Information Hub

This week we have a blog from the Housing and Dementia Research Consortium which is written by Yasmeen Hussein, Policy Executive at Foundations and member of the Dementia and Housing Working Group (D&HWG). They are looking at the Dementia Information Hub – your go-to place for dementia friendly guidance. Over to Yasmeen:

Produced by the D&HWG, the Dementia Information Hub padlet is an exciting new resource which acts as a noticeboard for all things dementia related. The padlet shares information for policy makers, research professionals, housing developers, health and care professionals, those living with dementia and their carers, the home improvement sector, and building environment supply chains.

What is the HDRC and why might you want to join?

This week’s blog comes from Dr Julie Barrett, Research Coordinator for the Housing and Dementia Research Consortium (HDRC). Over to you Julie…

Dementia is a major challenge for all of us and has escalated in importance on the public policy agenda. With the right support and early diagnosis people living with dementia can have a good quality of life. We know housing is a major part of the solution to living independently for longer, however, the evidence base on housing issues is limited.

HDRC Webinar, 21st September 2021

Thanks to Dr Julie Barrett, Research Coordinator for the Housing and Dementia Research Consortium (HDRC) for this week’s blog.

What does “build back better” mean for people living with dementia in extra care and retirement housing in the UK?

In its second webinar of 2021 the HDRC and guest presenters explored how extra care and retirement housing needs to change and prepare for the future with respect to residents living with dementia, bearing in mind Covid-19 is not going away and will not be the last pandemic we experience.

The 2021 All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) report ‘Housing for people with dementia – are we ready?’ states:

“The restrictions imposed in response to Covid-19 have highlighted existing challenges to housing providers. Many people affected by dementia have reported deterioration of their condition, but also an increased reticence to move to a care or nursing home. Creative solutions have been adopted by housing providers, often as a result of the property services, housing management and care teams working together. These examples of best practice need to be shared across the sectors.”

According to the World Economic Forum, Covid-19 is not an aberration. It is in fact part of a pattern of increasingly frequent epidemics, thus it is vital that we share good practice now, during the current epidemic, in order to reduce future risk.

Bridging the Gap: Supporting People Living With Dementia Beyond Loneliness

This week’s blog post is an HDRC ‘voice of the members’ blog written by Michael Roberts, Engaged Lives Project Officer at the ExtraCare Charitable Trust. The organisation is a provider of Extra Care Housing Schemes and Retirement Villages and is a member of the HDRC steering group.

Dementia and Loneliness – What’s the link?

A rose by any other (shorter) name…

We have a habit of using abbreviations and acronyms within our work to make it easier to refer to some of the various projects we work on, but we realise that it can sometimes be confusing for others who may not know what we’re talking about! This blog introduces you to some of our current shorthand terms, providing a bit of extra information to hopefully make things clear.

ADS – A nice easy one to start with. This is us, the Association for Dementia Studies, ably led by Professor Dawn Brooker MBE since we began back in 2009.

New report from the HDRC: provisions for people living with dementia in Extra Care Housing settings in the UK

This week’s blog was written by Dr Julie Barrett, Research Coordinator for the Housing and Dementia Research Consortium (HDRC). The HDRC has recently published a report from a study exploring the provisions, policies and procedures relating to people living with dementia in Extra Care Housing within the UK. You can find copies of the full report and summary report here, but Julie has provided a brief summary of the key points in this blog. Over to Julie:

5 blogs you may have missed

Our blog site aims to release a new post every week, but we realise that it’s not always easy to keep up with them. So this week we’re going to take stock and do a quick recap of five blogs that you may have missed from the past year.

1. Exploring issues relating to housing and care provision for LGBTQ older people – As it’s currently Pride Month, this seemed appropriate. It provides an overview of a webinar organised by the Housing and Dementia Research Consortium where three presenters shared their views and experiences of some of the issues facing LGBTQ people with dementia and LGBTQ older people more widely. It was a well-attended and well-received webinar, so definitely worth another look.

Best practice in running intergenerational programmes

Thanks to Dr Julie Barrett for this week’s blog.

Around 100 people came together on 26^th January 2021 for the latest webinar organised by the Housing and Dementia Research Consortium (HDRC), the aims of which were to explore different intergenerational programmes available to people living with dementia in accommodation and care settings in the UK, and the successes, challenges, barriers and sustainability issues facing such programmes, as well as the impact on people living with dementia and the children/students that take part. It was also impossible to avoid talking about intergenerational care without mentioning the challenges of delivery during the Covid-19 pandemic. There were six presentations during the webinar:

• Intergenerational Care and Housing in 2021 – an overview of UK policy and practice – Stephen Burke (Director, United for all Ages)
• The Essential ‘A’s of Intergenerational Experiences: 4 Key Pillars To Guide Your Project – Louise Goulden (Together Project founder)
• The Challenges and Obstacles facing Intergenerational Projects – Pre and During Covid-19 – Mirain Llwyd Roberts (Bridging the Generations Coordinator, Gwynedd Council)
• Right Time, Right Place! – Keith Oliver and Jess Shaw (Time and Place online poetry project collaborators)
• Maximum Contact – Maximum Magic! Life in an Intergenerational Nursery– Sue Egersdorff (Ready Generations Founder)
• Debutots – Joining Generations with Imagination – Kirsten Reeves (Debutots Worcestershire)

A blog of blogs

This ADS blog site has been up and running since August 2018, and during that time we’ve shared over 120 blog posts with you. Did you know though that we also have three other related blog sites linking to different work and projects? You can find them in the Blogroll section on the right of the screen, but this week we thought we’d put the spotlight on them for a change. So, what do we have?

This ADS blog site

This is our main blog site, where we share weekly posts on different projects, topics, events, and anything else that we think you might be interested in. In response to the pandemic we added a ‘Useful resources’ page where you can download copies of various information sheets and guides for providing support in different settings. These have proved very popular, so we hope that they have been useful over the past year. We’ve also recently added a ‘Webinars’ page to capture some of the online events that we’ve hosted, including recordings which you can watch back in your own time.

Enhancing the evidence base for person-centred dementia care

In late January, the Association for Dementia Studies (ADS) delivered a webinar as part of a regular Research Seminar series organised by the College of Health, Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Worcester. This series provides an opportunity for researchers within the university to share their work with their peers in an informal setting.

The webinar was chaired by Professor Dawn Brooker who welcomed everyone and provided an introduction to ADS, before handing over to Dr Simon Evans for the first presentation looking at ‘Connections with nature for people living with dementia’.

Simon talked about our need as humans to interact with nature, and provided an overview of existing evidence of the benefits of nature on our psychological, physical and social wellbeing. In terms of people living with dementia, it has been shown that engaging with nature can reduce agitation, increase self-esteem, and increase social interaction and communication. It may also act as memory trigger for activities, but unfortunately many people living with dementia have limited opportunities to engage with the natural world. Health and safety concerns and an inability to access outdoor spaces are just two potential barriers they may face.