One of our Home Managers was invited to speak at a forum encouraging the sharing of good practice across the care sector.
Cheryl Roy, Home Manager at Balhousie Clement Park in Dundee, ran a workshop at Care Home Connection, organised by the Tayside Care Home Collaborative Forum about a training initiative designed to help care professionals better support residents who are non-verbal due to their diagnosis of dementia.
The Tayside Care Home Collaborative Forum is a professional collaborative group with the purpose of taking a whole systems and measurable approach to supporting, sharing and implementing improvement practices across care homes in Tayside for the benefit of those who live and work in care homes, as well as the wider health and social care system.
Earlier this year Cheryl, along with four members of her care team, took part in the AIR project, in partnership with the University of St Andrews. Led by top dementia researcher Dr. Maggie Ellis, the seven-week course taught the team how to use various Adaptive Interaction techniques to communicate with residents, who due to conditions such as dementia are unable to communicate.
Adaptive Interaction looks at all the actions, expressions and gestures a person uses and how matching their behaviours can have a positive impact.
The purpose of the study has been to find out whether Adaptive Interaction has significant benefits for non-verbal residents and Clement Park has become a training site for the project.
Cheryl was able to use the opportunity at the Tayside Care Home Collaborative Forum to share the project and the team’s experiences using these new techniques. Cheryl said:
“We are very proud to be part of the AIR project and it’s been a privilege to work alongside Dr Maggie Ellis who has over 20 years’ experience in this research. It’s great to be able to go along to events like Care Home Connection and share some of the techniques we have learned to help support non-verbal residents. The training really makes us think differently about how we communicate.”
Cheryl’s workshop was a big success with many compliments and interest in the AIR Project from a number of organisations including Enrich Scotland and Scottish Care. Cheryl’s also been invited to the University of St Andrews National Conference next March to talk about the project.
For more information about the Tayside Care Home Collaborative Forum please visit https://bit.ly/3PyEW2q
