ESRC Festival: Are dementia services meeting patient and carer needs?
Thursday 2 November 2017
ARE DEMENTIA services in this country meeting patient and carer needs – and what can be done to improve them? That’s the question being posed at an event run by the University of Salford’s Institute for Dementia this week.
The event, held at the Salford Museum and Art Gallery on Tuesday November 7, will bring together people living with dementia and their family carers along with academic researchers and service providers.
Dr Tracey Williamson from the University of Salford’s Institute for Dementia, will present findings of her team’s research which show people with young onset dementia:
- want to know the early warning signs of dementia
- need greater psychological support at the point of diagnosis
- want better information as well as tips to keep independent and manage loneliness.
Family carers of people living with dementia want practical and psychological coping strategies, advice about activity and exercise as well as greater peer support.
Staying independent
Professor Josie Tetley and Dr Emma Koivunen, from Manchester Metropolitan University will also talk about their recent research, which has explored how mobile and wearable technologies can help people living with dementia stay independent and socially connected. Josie and Emma will also share their experiences of evaluating other community services that were developed to support people living with dementia and their carers.
Meanwhile, people with dementia and their carers are also being invited to come to the event and talk about what they want services to look like in the future.
Dr Williamson said: “If we are to improve services forpeople living with dementia, the most important step is that we ask people withexperience of the condition to talk to us about what they want to see.
“We’re inviting people affected by dementia to find out what we’ve discovered about how services could be made better, but also to tell us what they want services to look like – and how they want to get involved in our research in the future.”
The event is being held as part of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Festival of Social Science.
About: The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is the UK’slargest funder of research on the social and economic questions facing ustoday.
It supports the development and training of the UK’s future social scientists and also funds major studies that provide the infrastructure for research.
ESRC-funded research informs policymakers and practitioners and helps make businesses, voluntary bodies and other organisations more effective. The ESRC also works collaboratively with six other UK research councils and Innovate UK to fund cross disciplinary research and innovation addressing major societal challenges. The ESRC is an independent organisation,established by Royal Charter in 1965, and funded mainly by the Government.
The 2017 ESRC Festival of Social Science takes place from4-11 November with over 300 free events across the UK.
The festival, now in its fifteenth year, is designed to promote awareness of social science research by enabling scientists to engage with the public through debates, talks, workshops, seminars, film screenings, theatre, exhibitions and much more.
The festival is a unique opportunity for people to meet with some of the country’s leading social scientists and to discover more about the role research plays in their everyday life.
A full programme is available at www.esrc.ac.uk/festival. Join the discussion on Twitter using #esrcfestival. Logos for the festival can be downloaded from the ESRC website.
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