When is the best time for a person with dementia to move to a care home?

There are more than 400,000 older people living in care homes in the United Kingdom (UK) and around 80% of those people are likely to have dementia (SCIE, 2020). Care homes can be funded by the local authority, the National Health Service (NHS) or privately: it is estimated that around 40% of residents in care [read the full story…]

Self-Funders in England: How much choice and control do they really have?

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Self-funders (or elf-funders) are people who have to pay for their social care using their own finances, as opposed to receiving partial or full funding from their local council’s adult social care department. In England a threshold exists of £23,250, those who have above this amount in savings and sometimes other assets are deemed to [read the full story…]

Implementing guidelines to protect long-term care facilities

Fail-Safe N versus Trim and Fill: choose your bias measure wisely. It could have a major impact on your results.

COVID-19 has brought unprecedented challenges across all levels of society, but older people have undoubtedly been at the highest risk from this disease, particularly those living in long-term care facilities. As in many countries, the Chilean government has produced guidelines and regulations to encourage the prevention and control of COVID-19 outbreaks in residential and nursing [read the full story…]

Telling the tale: working in social care during the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020

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Jill Manthorpe discusses a qualitative study which examines the experiences of frontline workers in care homes and home care

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Subjective experiences trump hard evidence: older people’s choice of residential care

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Kate Baxter reviews a study by Trigg et al. (2018) which explores and compares the type and quantity of information that makes people feel comfortable when choosing a residential care home in the UK, Netherlands and Spain.

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Reablement in a care home context: a feasibility study

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Bruce McClure’s blog looks at a feasibility study of ‘LifeFul’, a reablement programme in the care home context.

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Oral care for nursing home residents

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This Cochrane review of the effects of oral care on prevention of nursing home acquired pneumonia included 4 RCTs providing low quality evidence that oral care may reduce mortality.

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Oral health improvement in care homes

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This cluster randomised controlled trial looked at changes in knowledge and attitudes in care homes following the introduction of an oral health care protocol. Significant improvements in knowledge were seen but no changes in attitudes.

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Limited evidence on the benefit of providing oral healthcare education to care home nurses on their attitude and their oral hygiene care skills

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Oral care is an important element of care for older people in care homes as oral health is often poor and can deteriorate rapidly causing pain discomfort and impacting on nutrition and quality of life.  With growing numbers of older people this is an area of increasing demand. This aim of the review was to [read the full story…]