What happened next?

Research can be odd sometimes because you do all the work, create resources to share the findings, share them widely, and hope that they make a difference. We’re trying to change that with some of our recent projects, by finding out what people have actually done with those resources in practice. Have they actually been used? Are they helping people? Are they sat on a shelf somewhere gathering dust?

We’re not expecting to hear that something is the best thing since sliced bread, but even knowing that you shared a booklet with someone and it helped them understand something would be really useful for us. We can see that booklets are being downloaded and videos are being watched, but not what people are doing afterwards.

Basically, once our resources have been released into the wild, what happened next?

There are three sets of resources that we’re currently trying to get some feedback on, all aimed at different settings, so please take a look at the following and see if you’ve used any of them. If you have, a quick bit of feedback via the relevant link would be appreciated!!

Get Real with Meeting Centres

The Get Real project investigated the challenges that face community-based group support for people living with dementia – such as Meeting Centres – in keeping going long term. There are three booklets for different audiences and a series of short video clips available to share the findings. If you’ve used any of them, please let us know by completing this short survey.

For more information on the Get Real with Meeting Centres project or to access any of the resources, please visit the dedicated blog site.

DemECH

The DemECH project looked at various aspects of supporting people living with dementia in Extra Care Housing. As well as the original three booklets, additional videos and an infographic were developed to create a suite of resources for different audiences. Have you used them? If yes, please click the following link to complete the DemECH resources impact evaluation survey.

As a reminder, all of the DemECH resources can be found here.

CHARM

The Care Home Action Researcher-in-Residence Model (CHARM) project aimed to support collaborative research between care homes and researchers, supporting staff, visitors and residents in care homes to design and implement their own unique and meaningful research. The CHARM Framework manual was developed to help guide care homes through the research process. If you’ve used the manual and would be willing to provide some feedback on it, please complete this short survey.

You can download a copy of the CHARM Framework manual from here.

We know that these different resources won’t apply to everyone, but if you’ve used any of them we’d really appreciate you taking a few minutes to let us know if they’re making a difference or not. Thank you!

Connect with ADS on twitter @DementiaStudies and on Facebook @adsuow 

We’re also on Instagram, Threads and LinkedIn so have a look and find us there too. 

Ever increasing numbers

When it comes to some of our videos and resources we don’t like to get too caught up on numbers as they don’t actually reflect what happens after someone has watched a video or downloaded a resource, but every now and then it’s nice to appreciate that the numbers mean our efforts aren’t going to waste. Here are a few things to tell you about:

• Our main video about our fully online Postgraduate Certificate has been viewed 120 times.
• We’ve got two Meeting Centre videos, one aimed at potential members and carers which has been viewed over 340 times, and one aimed at referrers which has been viewed over 170 times.
• Although only launched in mid-July, our suite of videos sharing the Get Real findings have been viewed nearly 180 times overall, and hopefully we’ll soon be getting those numbers for each individual video…
• The CHARM Framework Manual has been downloaded nearly 1,150 times!
• The two creative arts and sensory activity booklets produced by the TAnDem PhD students have been downloaded over 920 times, and that’s not counting downloads from our main website (which unfortunately we don’t know!).
• At the height of the Covid pandemic we created a series of resources focusing on different settings or situations. They’ve been downloaded nearly 3,950 times overall which is amazing, and we hope that they were useful during challenging times.

Get involved!

At the Association for Dementia Studies (ADS) we often have work underway where we need input from different groups. When those groups are ones we’re directly working with on a research project reaching them is easier, but when they are from the wider general public it can be a bit more tricky. Although we try to promote our various surveys via different routes including social media, they can sometimes get a bit lost so we thought we’d use this blog post to highlight three current surveys and bring them to your attention.

Crossing the Line

In early June we launched our Crossing the Line survey which aims to explore the experiences of family carers who provide personal care for a person with dementia. As mentioned in a previous blog post the survey is open to anyone who is a family carer with current or previous experience (within the past ten years) of providing personal care for someone with dementia. If that’s you and you’d like to get involved, you can complete the survey online using this link – link to survey.

The survey is also available in Welsh or you can request paper copies by contacting p.finlay@worc.ac.uk

Get involved

At the moment we’ve got three opportunities for people to get involved with our research activities, and although we’ve covered them in previous blogs we thought we’d bring them together to remind you of them in one place. In no particular order…

Get Real with Meeting Centres survey

As described in our ‘What do you value about Meeting Centres?’ blog, we’re looking for family members, friends and/or carers of people affected by dementia who attend Meeting Centres. We want to know about their experiences of Meeting Centres and also what their preferences are, to help us in our work looking at the sustainability of Meeting Centres.

Do you fit the bill? Could you share your views with us as part of this project? If yes, please complete the survey here. We’ve been able to extend the deadline for this survey, so it’s not too late.

CHARM Framework manual

When we put out our blog ‘The CHARM Framework manual has taken off!’ back in March, it had been downloaded around 700 times, which was brilliant. It has now been downloaded just over 900 times(!!), and we’re really interested to find out how people are using it in practice and what they think of it. Although it’s been developed from work in care homes, it’s principles are applicable in different settings too, so hopefully some of those downloads are from people who work in non-care home settings.

Have you downloaded a copy of the CHARM Framework manual? Can you spare five minutes to give us some feedback or suggest where the manual could be improved? If so, you can access the survey here. There is no closing date for this survey so you can get involved at any point.

Worcester Life Stories

We’re evaluating the impact of the ‘Know Your Place’ and ‘Life Stories Herefordshire and Worcestershire’ platforms as part of our Worcester Life Stories project. You can find out more about the platforms in previous blogs such as ‘Revisiting two ‘new’ online platforms’, and you can also get involved. We’ve got two surveys open at the moment, one for each platform, to find out how people are using the platforms and what they’ve done as a result of using them. We realise that people need time to use the platforms before they can comment on them, so we’ve extended the deadline for a bit.

Have you had experience of using one or both platforms, either on your own or with others? Please click on the relevant link(s) below to get involved.

• Know Your Place Worcester
• Life Stories Herefordshire and Worcestershire

If you’re wondering whether or not to complete any of these surveys, here are a few bits of extra information:

• All of the surveys are anonymous.
• They are all quite short so shouldn’t take long to complete.
• The Worcester Life Stories surveys have full project information at the start to fulfil the ethics requirements for that project.

Also, every response we get really is important and could help us make a difference. If you can’t complete any of our surveys, feel free to pass on the information to someone else who can. Thank you!

Connect with ADS on twitter @DementiaStudies and on Facebook @adsuow

Did you see…?

We try to have a new blog post every week, but realise that it can be easy for some posts to be missed when life is busy or we’re caught up with work. Every now and again we like to take stock and do a quick recap of a few posts to give them a second chance to be seen. Here are the ones we’ve chosen this time:

• How to use the environmental assessment tools – If you’ve seen us talking about the different environmental assessment tools we’ve got, but aren’t quite sure how to use them in practice, this is a good blog to look at. Don’t forget though, that since this blog post was written we’ve now got the garden assessment tool as well.
• A roundup of the CHARM research projects – As part of the CHARM project multiple different research projects were carried out in care homes, and this handy blog post brings them all together in one post so you can see what went on. There’s also a link to the CHARM framework manual which you may find useful to have a copy of.
• Finding out what people value about Meeting Centres – We’ve currently got a survey open for family members and carers of people with dementia who attend Meeting Centres to help us find out what is important to them. Information about the survey and a link to complete it can be found in this blog post.
• Introducing CAMBUS – An initiative that started recently was the ‘Coffee and Memory Bus’ which is acting as a form of outreach for people with memory concerns in Herefordshire and Worcestershire. This blog post tells you more about what they offer and has a link to the website where you can find out where they’re going to be on what days.
• 12 resources you should know about – In the run-up to Christmas (that feels like ages ago!) we told you about a different resource every day on social media then brought them together in one blog post. A handy one to look at if you need a quick reminder of the resources we’ve been involved with. You might even find ones that you didn’t realise existed but are really useful for what you’re doing.

So if you missed any of these the first time round please do take a look, or maybe you just want to remind yourself what they were about.

Don’t forget, you can look through all of our old blog posts by scrolling down, or by clicking on one of the ‘categories’ to the right of the page to see all posts about different topics.

Connect with ADS on twitter @DementiaStudies and on Facebook @adsuow

The CHARM Framework manual has taken off!

Back in November we made the CHARM (Care home action researcher-in-residence model) Framework manual available to download and covered it in a blog at the beginning of January. While we always believed in it, it’s great to see that it’s really taken off with around 700 downloads in such a short space of time!

The CHARM Framework manual

Getting feedback on its impact

As it’s gained some traction, we’d really love to hear what you think of it and how you’re using it in practice. If you’ve already downloaded a copy, or are about to now that you know of it, we’d appreciate you taking the time to complete a very short feedback survey to help us assess its impact. If you’re interested in being part of this, please click on this link to access the survey.

Why is this important for us?

When we conduct research, we always want to know whether it’s actually having an impact in practice. It’s all well and good us producing the manual and it being downloaded, but if it sits on someone’s computer or shelf without actually being used, it’s not really doing any good! That’s why we need to hear from you. What are you actually doing with the manual in practice? How is it making a difference to you, your residents/patients/clients, and their families? What changes have you made as a result of downloading a copy of the CHARM Framework manual? Unless we hear back from you, we won’t know, so please do get involved with the survey to let us know what you’ve been doing.

We’d also like to get in touch with some of you in the future to find out a bit more detail about how the manual is being used and what difference it’s making, so you’ll notice at the end of the survey that we ask for some contact details if you’d happy to be part of this bit. While we don’t expect everyone to be up for this, it would be great if at least some of you would be willing to get involved.

If you’re not sure what CHARM is, let alone the CHARM Framework manual, please take a look at one of our previous blogs which should hopefully help! There is also more information about CHARM in a separate section on this blog site. Don’t forget, although the manual was developed based on a research project focusing on care homes, you don’t have to work in a care home to use it. We hope it’s useful in a variety of different settings, so take a look.

Connect with ADS on twitter @DementiaStudies and on Facebook @adsuow

12 resources you should know about

Before Christmas, instead of ‘The 12 Days of Christmas’ we thought we’d tell everyone about a different resource each day. This was done on both our Twitter (@DementiaStudies) and Facebook (@adsuow) accounts, but in case you missed it or you’re not on social media we’ve pulled it all together here. We also think the resources are worth shouting about, so we make no apology for trying to let everyone know about them!

Resource 1

First off, the CHARM Manual, our newest resource. A FREE interactive, downloadable, step-by-step manual for conducting research in care homes. You can get a copy here.

Resource 2

Our second resource to bring to your attention is the gardens assessment tool ‘Is your garden dementia friendly?’ It’s the latest in the suite of assessment tools and you can download it for free via our website.

The CHARM Framework: A step-by-step guide for care homes to conduct their own research projects

One of the main outputs from the CHARM (Care home action researcher-in-residence model) projects is a FREE interactive, downloadable step-by-step manual for conducting research in care homes. The CHARM Framework manual was created by Faith Frost, Dr Isabelle Latham and Professor Tracey Williamson.

The manual has been developed using the tools and experience gained from working with four care homes during the CHARM project and has been designed to be accessible for both new and experienced researchers! You can find out more about the CHARM project here.

CHARM – round-up of the research projects

If you follow our blog you may have noticed several posts relating to the CHARM project, which we haven’t actually told you about. While you might be thinking it was a bit rude of us not to make more of them, don’t worry, it was part of a wider plan and now is their time to shine. We needed the posts to be made available in the interim from a CHARM project perspective but wanted to ‘launch’ them all officially in on go, so we’ve been deliberately sneaking them out under the radar until now.

As part of the CHARM project four care homes have been conducting mini-research projects, and the following posts show what they have been up to, so please have a read through them:

Research Methods e-Festival: What is CHARM?

In this week’s blog Faith Frost talks about a recent presentation she was involved with last month. Over to Faith…

Hello!

It was the 2021 Research Methods e-Festival last month, organised by NCRM and methods@manchester. We were pleased to be able to present the fantastic work that the CHARM team had been doing, showcase some of our initial findings from the study, and answer some interesting questions!

Dr Isabelle Latham took the lead in presenting as the senior researcher on the project, whilst I was on hand to respond to the comments pane. Izzie gave a great overview of why the CHARM project was needed and what the CHARM framework is.