This week we hear from Dr Shirley Evans, Director of the Association for Dementia Studies, who reflects on her trip to Dundee for the launch of Meeting Centres Scotland on the 25th March 2024. Over to you Shirley… A rainy Sunday was spent travelling up to Dundee  from the Welsh Borders for the much anticipated launch of Meeting Centres Scotland. Such a journey involved four trains but it all worked like clockwork and the journey was super-productive. The Premier Inn at which I overnighted is located by the River Tay and only five minutes from the modern and stylish Dundee Station. The sho ..read more

Here at the Association for Dementia Studies we’re pleased to say that we currently have four PhD opportunities on offer. If you’re interested in taking your studies that step further, take a look below and see if one of our PhD topics takes your fancy. Be aware that only the first one is funded, so for the others you would need to be in a position to self-fund your studies. Funded studentship Development and Evaluation of a ‘Best Housing’ Assessment Tool for People Living with Dementia in Extra Care Housing This is a fully-funded, full-time PhD studentship that will seek to understand the rea ..read more

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 usef ..read more

This week we hear from Dr Chris Russell about an exciting event we’ve got coming up soon. Over to you Chris… Time flies when you’re having fun, and time has certainly shot by since 2019 because, in September, the fully online course we offer, the Postgraduate Certificate in Person-Centred Dementia Studies, will be five years old! To celebrate this, in April, we’re holding an event for alumni from the course. What tremendous students we have worked alongside over those years; drawn from health, social care and social work, housing, advocacy, and leisure settings (and many more, we’ve even had t ..read more

Last week the second in-person workshop took place as part of the Crossing the Line project which is looking to develop resources to support family carers providing personal care to a person living with dementia. The first workshop in January was such a great day with lots of input and insight, and the second workshop did not disappoint either. Professor Tracey Williamson welcomed everyone to the event before inviting Roy Dibble, one of our experts by experience, to talk to the group. Roy set the scene for the day by sharing his story of caring for his wife Ros who is living with Posterior Cor ..read more

Resources on supporting people living with dementia in Extra Care Housing In February we launched the additional resources from the DemECH project (Supporting people living with dementia in Extra Care Housing). We would now like to know what you think of these resources and how you have used or intend to use them. As a reminder, the resources can be found here. We would like to invite you to take part in a study that involves completing a survey to evaluate the impact, use and usefulness of the DemECH resources: Three “Key Insights” booklets, each with a different target audience: adult socia ..read more

Although nominations for 2023/24 have been open for a while now, we haven’t really said much about The Hennell Award recently so we thought we’d put that right! For those who may not be aware, The Hennell Award for Innovation and Excellence in Dementia Care has been running since 2014 and was set up by June Hennell in memory of her late husband Brian. The award recognises people who have made a significant contribution to promoting person-centred care. If you have attended a course facilitated by the Association for Dementia Studies, you are eligible to apply. As mentioned in a previous blog ..read more

Last year we completed our ‘Get Real with Meeting Centres’ project, which was investigating the challenges that face community-based group support for people living with dementia – such as Meeting Centres – in keeping going long term. This project has certainly informed us in our thinking about the role of such community initiatives in the dementia pathway, and in particular about how Meeting Centres in the UK can function going forward. But we also want to know what everyone else thought – i.e. those we work with and alongside. It’s now more than 6 months since we held our big celebration ev ..read more

At the start of February over 20 people got together online from different countries to get an update on what’s going on with Meeting Centres across the world. The session builds on the regular fortnightly meetings that we’ve been facilitating in the UK and those taking place in Scotland, where we find it useful to keep track of who’s doing what. It provided an informal chance to catch up with each other and share experiences, challenges and ideas. Dr Shirley Evans led the session, but we were pleased to welcome Professor Rose-Marie Dröes who developed the Meeting Centre model and was the driv ..read more

Extra Care Housing (ECH) is an increasingly popular form of housing for older people, often as a preferred alternative to a care home. Many people appreciate the independence that having their own apartment within an ECH scheme can offer, while also being able to access help and support, enjoying opportunities for social interaction and feeling safe. The DemECH project explored how ECH can help people to live well with dementia and investigated some of the associated advantages and disadvantages. The project used a mixed methods designthat combined in-depth qualitative data collected from nine ..read more