Research

Research in dementia care does not attract as much funding as experiments into drug treatments, unfortunately. However, some good research studies have been conducted in recent years and more is underway, often under the banner of person-centred care (a term coined by Tom Kitwood and Kathleen Bredin in the 1990s – see their 1992 Ageing and Society article.

In 2014 Rhonda completed a small research study of care workers in the UK. The findings of that study have been published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Social Work Practice , entitled “Person-centred communication in dementia care: a qualitative study of the use of the SPECAL ® method by care workers in the UK.” The article is available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02650533.2017.1381948

A further article, co-authored with Sally Markwell, was published in 2020, entitled “Improving well-being in dementia care for clients and carers” in the Journal of Public Mental Health: The art, science and politics of creating a mentally healthy society, 19 (4) (2020) pp.321-326 ISSN: 1746-5729. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPMH-05-2020-0039 

Another research project on the SPECAL ® method, a mixed method evaluation study, was conducted by a team at King’s College London, led by Dr Niall Mccrae. The results were published in the Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences 34(3):736-744  – The Specialized Early Care for Alzheimer’s method of caring for people with dementia: an investigation of what works and how (2019). DOI:10.1111/scs.12778