Care home managers from all over the UK gathered at the Hilton Hotel in Stansted, Essex for the Caring Home Group’s first Dementia Care Conference on September 25th.
The conference was set up with the aim of improving the quality of dementia care across the country and focused on the question: What does leadership in person centred dementia care look, sound and feel like?
The event was organised by the group’s in-house training company Training in Care and key speakers included David Sheard and Peter Priednieks of Dementia Care Matters who also facilitated a series of interactive workshops.
Both David Sheard and Peter Priednieks are leading authorities on caring for people with Dementia and David Sheard is the author of several books on the condition.
Caring Homes Group Learning and Development Manager Suzanne Powlson, who organised the conference, hailed the event a ‘great success, which provided an opportunity for managers and senior care home workers to discover how they could improve services through good leadership and management.’
Suzanne said: “We were extremely fortunate to have such prominent speakers as David and Peter. We are delighted that the event had such a clear learning outcome and that everyone went away inspired and motivated.”
Everyone attending was given a 50-point checklist of services that they should be providing for people with dementia. Afterwards they were asked to run through the checklist to see where improvements could be made at their own care homes.
Another key speaker at the conference was Caring Homes Development Director, Phil Osborne. Phil talked about how the company had been influenced by latest research on how the environment had a major effect on the well being of people with dementia. He said Caring Homes was now looking to make environmental changes at its existing care homes in line with the research by Stirling University.
Suzanne explained: “In the past it was believed that people with dementia had a tendency to wander, however, the latest research has shown that this is not the case. Studies clearly show that every journey has a purpose but that the complexities of home layout and lack of clear directions result in wandering and frustration. The Stirling University study shows this can be remedied by making improvements to the environment, including better signposting, better lighting, shorter corridors and more communal living areas.”
Suzanne, a qualified nurse with a background in care home management and training, founded Training in Care in 1996. The company was acquired by Caring Homes last year and now provides training for every aspect of the care industry from dementia care to caring for people with learning disabilities.
All managers who attended the Dementia Care Conference will receive follow up support from the Training in Care team to help them implement changes. There are also plans for a series of regional mini-conferences, which can be attended by all care home staff.
Statistics show that 75% of people in care homes have some level of dementia. Ten of the 94 care homes run by Caring Homes - the UK’s biggest independently run care home provider - specialise in dementia care.
Suzanne concluded: “We are so delighted by the response we have had to the Dementia Care Conference that we are now planning to hold similar conferences in other areas of care.”
These are likely to include a Learning Disabilities Conference, which will look at the issue of challenging behaviour and also a Palliative Care Conference, which will address the issue of end of life policies.