Addressing mouth and teeth care for people living with dementia in home care – preliminary findings of the SORTED study

Dr Dia Soilemezi, University of Portsmouth

Summary: For people living with dementia who get home care support, a care plan is developed to outline the type of personal care they need by a manager or supervisor working for a home care company. However, we don’t know how the homecare staff assess and implement mouth or dental care and the challenges they may encounter. This is important to investigate as there is a strong link between dementia and poor oral health. As part of the SORTED study, we carried out 22 semi-structured interviews with homecare staff (workers, co-ordinators and managers) to explore their views on care assessments and care plans relating to assessing and delivering mouth and dental care. We will present the preliminary findings of these interviews and discuss potential challenges they face and strategies to engage people with dementia in looking after their teeth.

Information priorities after a diagnosis of dementia: Forward with dementia

Jane Wilcock (Principal Investigator), Dr Claudio di Lorito, UCL

Summary: Forward with dementia is a personalised online guide and toolkit designed with and for people living with dementia, their families and professionals to help access the right information after a diagnosis. This talk will focus on the current phase of work that is further developing the guide to include resources and information for social care and home care workers.

Please register via Eventbrite.

The Home Care Research Forum is based at the NIHR Policy Research Unit in Health and Social Care Workforce.