Steven Haigh, Executive Director of Primary Care Sheffield, speaks at CATCH July Networking Lunch

Members of the CATCH community and collaborators gathered for the July Networking Lunch on 21 July with guest speaker Steven Haigh. Steven spoke about the challenges of ageing in Sheffield.

Sustainable care network announced to identify solutions to UK social care crisis

A new research project led by academics at the University of Sheffield will examine potential sustainable solutions to the ongoing crisis within the UK’s social care system.

With an ageing population, shortages of staff in home and residential care, and growing reliance on unpaid carers, the question of how to resource and deliver social care is a critical issue facing society today.

"Care and Ageing": 2nd annual CIRCLE international seminar

2nd Annual CIRCLE International Seminar

Caring & Ageing: international perspectives on family and workplace challenges

Register here: 

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/care-ageing-2nd-annual-circle-international-seminar-tickets-34684920531?ref=enivte001&invite=MTIwNTI5ODUvY2F0Y2hzdGFmZkBsaXN0cy5zaGVmZmllbGQuYWMudWsvMA%3D%3D&utm_source=eb_email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=invitemodernv2&utm_term=eventimage&ref=enivte001

White Paper - Neighbourhoods of the Future

Better Homes for Older Adults - Improving health, care, design and technology

Join us on Monday 15th May in the CATCH Home Lab

On Monday 15^th May, join us for tea and cake, any time from 12.00 – 14.00 to discover how you can use this realistic and welcoming facility in your next research project.

Event: Grey Matters: The Future of Ageing (Cafe Scientifique)

Grey Matters: The Future of Ageing, hosted by Cafe Scientifique, Sheffield is a public event that's taking part at the Showroom Cafe Bar, Sheffield (S1 2BX) on Monday 8th May 2017.

Housing and care industry must get ready for digital

A new article from ComputerWeekly.com tells how the housing and care industry must get ready for digital.

“Many of the telecare systems deployed today have not changed over the past 30 years. These systems are largely still analogue-based and are frequently incompatible with modern, feature-rich digital systems.”

CATCH staff join eldercare breakfast meeting with Westfield Health

On Friday 31st March, CATCH Director Professor Mark Hawley and Centre Manager Simon Butler were invited to attend a breakfast meeting around eldercare by Westfield Health at their impressive new building, Westfield House.

Telecare design: offputting?

"What is telecare?" I her you ask! Telecare is essentially equipment that can help people live independently in their own home. The most common may be the pendent alarm (wear it around a persons neck, press the button if they need help because they have fallen for example).

There has been an interesting recent publication released in the Journal of Ageing and Society exploring how the design of telecare can put people off.

You can access this publication here.

In-Touch: exploring apps for people living with dementia around the world

In-Touch is a project looking at iPad apps for people living with dementia to enjoy fun and meaningful activities.

Initially funded by the Netherlands Science Programme, the In-Touch project has gone through several phases with a number of international partners.
Building on previous work which demonstrated that people with dementia are able to learn to use touchscreens to play digital games, the launch of iPads inspired the In-Touch project to see if these small touchscreen devices could also be used by people who have dementia.
In Phase 1, partners at Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, and three large Dutch care organisations - Humanitas, Aafje, and Laurens, tried out 10 existing iPad apps with people living with dementia in day centres and care homes. This demonstrated that people with dementia, including many who were not previous computer users, could learn to use iPads.

Phase 2 started in Sheffield with two apps that represented a familiar game – card game Solitaire – and an unfamiliar ‘tile-matching’ type game, Bubble Explode. Thirty people attending day care or living in care homes played one or other on three separate occasions and we filmed how they interacted with the iPad. From this study we learnt that familiarity is not the most helpful feature for being able to play a game as people completed Bubble Explode more easily than Solitaire. However, both groups enjoyed playing the games, even if they could not complete them.

 Also in Phase 2, funded by the Ontario Shores Foundation, 30 people in Ontario, Canada, have been trying out Bubble Explode and a jigsaw puzzle app to discover what makes games enjoyable and engaging for people who have dementia. Videos from Sheffield and Toronto are being used to identify the features that make touchscreen apps easy to learn and play.

In Phase 3, new ‘dementia-friendly’ versions of Solitaire and Bubble Explode are being tested to examine the effect of increasing the ‘accessibility’ features of the apps. The makers of the two apps implemented these accessibility changes and we are hoping to use the evidence to help make more dementia-friendly apps.

The international element of the project is critical for several reasons. First is to highlight how much of the experience of living with dementia and the challenges people face are universal. It is also important to demonstrate that the findings apply across countries, cultures and languages so that they can be more readily accepted. The partners in the In-Touch study span a wide range of disciplines and experience and have worked together to produce something of growing relevance across the world.
From this initial project several strands have grown. First is AcTo Dementia, a CATCH PhD project which is evaluating apps in the iTunes store for suitability for people living with dementia. Second is Let’s Connect, a project funded by the Ontario Trillium Foundation to the Oshawa Seniors Centre to develop a training package for people with dementia to use tablets at home. Third is the development of a personal activity package for people living in care homes funded by the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration and Aging.

In CATCH, we’re committed to the UK remaining a welcoming home of global scholarship and we will continue to ensure our research knows no geographical boundaries.

To find out more about the #WeAreInternational campaign and to show your support, visit http://www.weareinternational.org.uk/

Lonliness. More harmful than smoking 15 cigarettes a day?

An article in the Guardian highlights the problem of lonliness and how it is making people ill. it includes some staggering statistics such as "lonliness is more harmful than smoking 15 cigarettes in a day" and GPs see between 1 and 5 lonley older adults over the age of 65 every day.

If you want to read more, please click here.

Place based systems of care

Have you heard of these?
Are you interested in how place based systems of care could improve health and health care?

A recent King's Fund report entitled "Place-based systems of care: A way forward for NHS and England" discusses just this.

The report can be downloaded here.

Canadian Association on Gerontology Conference 2015: Raising Awareness of the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging.

Jacob Andrews

Hello, I'm Jacob Andrews, PhD student in CATCH. My work involves using machine learning to detect the onset of depression in older adults, as part of the THAW network. I've been in Calgary, Canada attending the Canadian Association on Gerontology annual meeting. I'll be writing a couple of blog entries to highlight points arising that may be of interest to those researching gerontology in the UK.

On Friday 23rd October, masters and doctoral students were invited to a lunch with Dr. Yves Joanette, scientific director of the Canadian Institute of Health Research's Institute of Aging. In his talk, Dr. Joanette highlighted the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Ageing. This is a project following more than 50,000 individuals aged 45-85 over a 20 year period, measuring psychological, biological, medical, social and lifestyle factors of these individuals at regular intervals. The first data collection from these individuals has now been completed, and the data are ready to be mined. This represents an exciting project that anyone in the field of ageing could find interesting to explore. It adds to a number of longitudinal studies of ageing, and hopefully through doing research using data from such projects, we'll be able to gain a much better insight into how we age, and what causes the differences that occur in old age between individuals.

Please keep watching this space for more stuff from the conference!

Written by Jacob Andrews

Pros and cons for technology in care homes

On the 30^th of September Telehealth and Care Technologies (TaCT) held a Special Interest Group (SIG) at Kenwood Hall in Sheffield. One of the aims of the day was to raise awareness of the research going on around the use of technology in care homes. A further aim was to start a dialogue with a range of stakeholders about the pros and cons for technology and the importance of research in identifying and developing new ways of delivering care through the use of technology. Attendees included care home managers, health care professionals, commissioners and researchers. 

Presentations were given by Dr Steven Ariss, who discussed the research being undertaken around the Enhanced Community Palliative Support Services (EnComPaSS) project; Dr Sarah Smith presented on the Computer Interactive Reminiscence & Conversation Aid (CIRCA) and Living in the Moment (LIM) these look at the use of technology for communication and leisure in care homes; Professor Pam Enderby on the Electronic Recording in Care (ERiC) project and Rachel Binks presented the work Airedale have been doing on using videoconferencing in care homes. These were then followed by a debate and the opportunity to network. 

If anyone like a copy of any outputs from the event, please contact: LKNewbould1@sheffield.ac.uk

Written by Louise Newbould