White Rose Collaboration for Dementia, Cognition and Care Workshop

Several member of the RAT group attended a workshop held by the White Rose consortium ‘Dementia, Cognition and Care’.

The day was chaired by Professors Gail Mountain (RAT group, Professor of Health Services Research, University of Sheffield) and Professor Gillian Parker (Professor of Social Policy Research and Director of SPRU) Researchers and practitioners attended, and shared experiences of engaging people with dementia in research and practice, and discussed as well as discussing ethical issues surrounding it.

It was a very useful day, with presentations from researchers and practitioners including: Jane McKeown, University of Sheffield/ Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trust, who presented her work with the Sheffield Dementia Involvement Group (SHINDIG) Please click here Lynsey Lindley, York St John University: ‘Investigating talk-in-action between a person with dementia 
and their everyday conversational partners’. Sarah Smith, University of Sheffield:  ‘Use of touch screen technology for people with dementia’ and Claire Craig, Sheffield Hallam University whose presentation focused on good practice for communicating and researching with people with dementia.

Alan Wright and Sarah Bauermeister shared experiences of adapting research for people with dementia, the challenges faced and how methods were adapted.

In the afternoon presentations by Suzie Snowden (Research Student) and Peter Bowie (Consultant in Old Age Psychiatry at Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS FT) focused on the legal framework for assessing "mental capacity" in research practice, providing some valuable hints and tips from experience in care homes and hospital settings. Professor Gillian Parker stepped in to the breach by outlining Nada Savitch's (Director at Innovations in Dementia) Key points were the carer’s voice is often prioritised in dementia research and that mental capacity may vary by time of day as well as being decision-specific.

The day concluded with a ‘Question time’ style panel. Discussions related to: researcher suitability in working with people with dementia, options for methods of seeking consent, the level of information needed, depending on risks involved for participants, the challenges of assessing mental capacity when working to recruitment targets and working with families of people with dementia and how to deal with disagreements regarding people’s capacity to consent.  

For more information about the consortium please click here.

These  workshops aim to bring together skills knowledge and experience of people living with the condition, people who work in dementia services and researchers and use the combined knowledge of attendees to identify topics for future care research, as well as disseminating knowledge of best practice in dementia research and stimulating interest and support for researchers new to this area.

Please join us for our next free workshop on Wednesday the 7^th January at The University of Sheffield. if you are interested in becoming involved This will be the final workshop pulling together the information from the previous events.

Or for more information or to register, please visit this website.

 

Written by Louise Newbould, Becky Field, Dr Sue Easton & Sarah Smith.