Seventeen care homes have registered with ENRICH in Norfolk & Suffolk. On Monday 03 March 2014, 38 people, including 13 care home managers and staff and 5 researchers, attended a meeting held at the University of East Anglia Sportspark to learn more about ENRICH and how local care homes can get involved in dementia research.

Dr Andrew Tarbuck chaired the event which included talks and presentations from researchers working within care homes, perspectives of care home staff supporting studies, and a dementia trainer and research network staff talking through dementia awareness and consent issues.

The day was well received, with feedback from attendees about the benefits from the day and involvement with ENRICH generally including comments such as:

• “It’s about communication, sharing, giving our residents the choice to be a part of research”
• “Opportunities for our home to be involved, interest for staff”
• “Ways of involving people with dementia in research”
• “Thank you for a day of ‘liberating thinking’, and for the opportunity to interact, and for approachability of speakers”
• “Really great day, would be great to have an annual event”
• “Realising how care homes can assist in research and improve dementia care”
• “All areas of research; funding, ethics, consent, feasibility, PERSON with dementia FIRST”

Several of our ENRICH registered care homes are gaining experience of research by supporting a PhD student, Diane Bunn, from the University of East Anglia with her study ‘Thinking About Drinking’. Diane has engaged several of the care homes by discussing the following information with care home managers, staff, residents and family members with a view to running focus groups to explore the topic from differing perspectives: 

Thinking about Drinking:

Preventing dehydration in care homes

Do you have any thoughts about why some residents you look after don’t seem to drink enough?

Have you found ways of helping reluctant residents to drink more?

We want to hear what you think about these issues!

How are we doing this?

During 2014 we are asking groups of residents, their families, care staff and supervisory staff if they will take part in small focus groups to talk about these questions and anything else that might be relevant.

Why are we doing this?

We want to hear about your thoughts and ideas which may help residents to drink enough to remain healthy and what things make that difficult so that we can develop ways of preventing dehydration in the future.

The ENRICH programme has enabled Diane to be put in touch with care homes in Norfolk & Suffolk who might like to take part in this study.

If you would like to know more, please contact Juniper West, Senior Research Nurse and Norfolk & Suffolk’s ENRICH project lead, or Diane Bunn, the Lead Researcher, at Norwich Medical School, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ  email: d.bunn@uea.ac.uk; telephone: 01603 591966