We have been working with a range of interdisciplinary professionals to pilot an action research project called Better Visits.
Better Visits aims to improve the experience that relatives have when going to a care setting to see their loved ones with dementia. The plan is to pilot creating and using a resource in one care setting based on what existing visitors tell us what challenges they face when visiting and what could potentially enhance this for them.
We are delighted to share that we have now got ethics approval from De Montfort University for our questionnaires for relatives and friends who visit loved ones in care settings and that these will hopefully be going out to over 100 people during February. We will then be able to gather information, as well as to offer one-to-one meetings and focus groups sessions as best we can to learn about the challenges faced and the support required to ensure that older people and their loved ones can have better visits.
We are delighted to be able to undertake this work with the fantastic group of like minded people from different organisations. A chance conference sitting on a great table turned the original idea into the proposal that won funding back in July 2017.