Looking into how community groups and schemes can be sustainable, with SCI-Dem

With 2019 now well underway, so is a new project for ADS: SCI-Dem – Sustainable Community Interventions for People Living with Dementia, an 18-month review looking at the nuts and bolts of how various community groups and schemes to support people with dementia can be run successfully and sustainably. Research Associate Thomas Morton explains:

Personally, this January, it has very much been a case of “new year, new me”. No, I haven’t taken up yoga or given up smoking, I did that in 2016 (the quitting smoking, not the yoga), but I have started work on a fresh project for ADS, having only joined the department just before Christmas, to do just that. Senior Research Fellow Teresa Atkinson and I are in the process of firming up and nailing down a plan of action for what is known as a ‘realist review’ (a specific method for scouring all the data out there on particular topic), in order to develop what is called a ‘programme theory’ (a kind of broad model of how things can work under different circumstances).