Life Story Work in Dementia Care: Good practice and getting involved

Description

Everybody has a life story. These are rich and varied and can be used to communicate who we are to the people around us. It has been suggested that life story work could be an important tool for enhancing person-centred dementia care, but up until now there has been little evidence about the experiences of people with dementia or family carers doing life story work or what constitutes good practice. In 2012 the Social Policy Research Unit (University of York), together with Innovations in Dementia, Dementia UK and the Life Story Network, launched the first study of its kind looking at life story work as a complex intervention requiring evaluation. This study, funded by the National Institute for Health Research, consisted of a literature review, focus groups with people with dementia, family carers and professionals, a national survey and a pilot evaluation of life story work in six care homes and four inpatient hospital wards. People with dementia and family carers were involved throughout as expert advisers on virtual advisory groups.

This presentation will focus on nine good practice learning points for life story work that were identified through the focus groups, as well as the ways people with dementia and carers were involved in the research and could be involved in future projects.

Period	3 Nov 2016
Event title	11th UK Dementia Congress
Event type	Conference
Location	Brighton, United KingdomShow on map
Degree of Recognition	National