Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
Dementia and social care
Social care involves providing social work, personal care, protection or social support to people to help them to maintain independence and live with a good quality of life. It is predominantly delivered through services such as homecare, assisted living and care homes. It may also be provided by voluntary and community organisations. These services provide a vital source of support for many people with dementia and their families.
Our research focuses around social care and dementia focusses particularly on ways in which social care providers can provide good quality person-centred care for people living with dementia through staff development or the application of specific interventions. It is shaping understanding of how to deliver good social care and how to prepare and support the workforce to do this.
Our research in social care includes use of arts-based approaches and creative practice as methods to engage people with dementia and to support staff to do so in social care settings. We also use creative research methods to support inclusive data collection with people with dementia.
This video, developed with our expert by experience advisory group from the DCM EPIC trial (with link to EPIC trial web-page) in care homes, explains why conducting research in care homes and other social care settings is important.
Current and recent funded research and evaluation:
NICHE Leeds is a partnership between care homes and researchers based on the 'Living Lab' model that has been active in Maastrict in the Netherlands since 1998. The Centre for Dementia research is an academic partner in NICHE Leeds, working alongside the University of Leeds who lead the initiative, and care home provider partners.
The model involves bringing together researchers, care home staff, residents and their relatives/supporters to identify priority areas for care improvement. Working together we gather evidence and generate insight into how new ways of working can help care homes to innovate. This can include presenting existing research evidence in accessible formats and supporting plans for implementation, through to designing and applying for funding to conduct research in areas of identified need.
Chief Investigator: Professor Karen Spilsbury, University of Leeds
Leeds Beckett Investigators: Professor Claire Surr, Dr Rachael Kelley, Dr Nicky Taylor and Dr Chloe Bradwell
Read more about the NICHE Leeds partnership here.
This career development award aimed to provide opportunities for Nicky to learn about ways to take her co-production and creative engagement methods and apply them to working with people with dementia living in care homes.
Chief Investigator: Dr Nicky Taylor
Leeds Beckett Investigators: Professor Claire Surr
Funder: National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Three Schools Dementia Research Programme
Funded amount: £29,769
This study is carrying out a feasibility cluster randomised controlled trial of the Cognitive Daisy (COG-D) in care homes. The COG-D is a package developed to help staff assess and plan care around people’s cognition. If the COG-D seems to lead to change and the trial is feasible to conduct, we intend to apply for further funding to conduct a larger scale trial.
Chief Investigator: Dr Petra Pollux, Lincoln University
Leeds Beckett Investigators: Professor Claire Surr
Funder: National Institute for Health and Care Research, Research for Social Care (NIHR RfSC)
Funding amount: £279,729
Study outputs: Pollux et al (2023) The Cognitive Daisy (COG-D) for improving care for residents with dementia in care homes: protocol of a feasibility RCT. Pilot and Feasibility Studies. 9(34) https://doi.org/10.1186/s40814-023-01256-8
This study is assessing the acceptability and feasibility of implementing an intervention that will support improved nutritional care for people with dementia who are living at home. It involves training homecare staff to work in partnership with the carer of a person with dementia to identify individuals at risk of malnutrition and to address this in practical ways. We hope this will help to reduce the numbers of people becoming unwell and/or needing hospital care due to poor nutrition.
Chief Investigator: Professor Jane Murphy, Bournemouth University
Leeds Beckett Investigators: Professor Claire Surr
Funder: National Institute for Health and Care Research, Research for Patient Benefit (NIHR RfPB)
Funding amount: £247,270
The Person-Centred Observation and Reflection Tool (PORT) is a reflective observation tool, grounded in person-centred care, to support staff to develop empathic skills and their own practice. It addresses the current gap for a simple to learn and use, observation tool that is accessible to all staff. Leeds Beckett University are a member of the international consortium the 'Person First dementia Network (PFdN)' who developed the PORT tool. Professor Surr led a publication on use of the PORT tool within international practice settings and is joint UK lead for PORT with Professor Dawn Brooker (University of Worcester).
Chief Investigator: Professor Claire Surr
Funder: Internally funded
To read more about PORT please visit the PORT project page
This pilot project seeks to explore the implementation and impact of a novel Playwork-based intervention at Simon Marks Court, a long-term dementia care setting based in Leeds. The aim is to explore and evaluate whether Playwork can be acceptably and feasibly applied to working with people living with dementia in care home settings. This practice-based project involves the collaboration of final year Playwork BA students with the staff and residents of Simon Marks Court.
Chief Investigator: Dr Chloe Bradwell
Leeds Beckett investigators: Dr Mike Wragg, Nicky Everett
Funder: internally funded
In the DCM EPIC trial we experienced a high number of care home residents who were recruited but did not complete the full trial. This was largely due to deaths which were anticipated to occur due to the population of study or to moving to another care home. This is known as 'loss to follow-up' and causes problems for trials because it means there may not be the required number of participants who complete the trial to provide robust results. This is a common challenge in trials in care home settings, but also applies to trials in other populations. This study looked at a different type of trial design - known as an open cohort trial - where new participants are recruited throughout the study period. It explored how the analysis of trial data can be undertaken to be able to accommodate this ongoing recruitment and different periods of time exposed to the intervention.
Chief Investigator: Dr Rebecca Walwyn, University of Leeds
Leeds Beckett Investigators: Professor Claire Surr
Funder: Medical Research Council (MRC) Methodology bolt-on
Funding amount: £251,787
Study outputs: Surr, et al (2024) Researchers’ experiences of the design and conduct challenges associated with parallel-group cluster-randomised trials and views on a novel open-cohort design PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0297184
This study investigated the effectiveness and cost effectiveness of Dementia Care MappingTM (DCM) as a method for supporting care home staff to delivered person-centred care.
To read more about the study including a full list of publications please visit the EPIC Trial project page.
Chief Investigator: Professor Claire Surr
Leeds Beckett investigators: Dr Alys Griffiths, Dr Rachael Kelley
Funder: National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment Programme (NIHR HTA)
Funding amount: £2,434,490
This trial aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of electric tibial nerve stimulation for reducing urinary incontinence in care home residents. It randomly assigned 408 care home residents to receive either tibial nerve stimulation or a sham (fake) simulation. No meaningful differences were found in urinary incontinence or any other outcomes (e.g. quality for life) between the two groups and so it was concluded the intervention was not effective in reducing urinary incontinence.
Chief Investigator: Professor Jo Booth - Glasgow Caledonian University
Leeds Beckett investigators: Professor Claire Surr
Funder: National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment Programme
Study outputs:
- Booth et al (2019) ELECtric Tibial nerve stimulation to Reduce Incontinence in Care homes: protocol for the ELECTRIC randomised trial. Trials 20 (723) https://doi.org/10.1186/s13063-019-3723-7
- Booth et al (2021) Tibial nerve stimulation compared with sham to reduce incontinence in care home residents: ELECTRIC RCT Health Technology Assessment. 25(41) https://doi.org/10.3310/hta25410
This consultancy project involved review and support for the revision and development of Barchester’s 10-60-06 quality assessment and development programme, implemented across all their care homes.
Consultancy lead: Professor Claire Surr
Funder: Barchester Healthcare
This project is based on the creative practice of Dr Alan Dunn in Belong Villages, a long-term care setting. It investigates the process, impact and benefits of tongue twister-based interventions in this setting. We will explore the impact of the intervention on residents (including verbal fluency, enjoyment and wellbeing), staff and managers, as well as students and researchers. We will focus on their perceptions of dementia and the use of sound in dementia care.
Chief Investigator: Dr Alan Dunn (Leeds Beckett University School of Art)
Leeds Beckett investigators: Dr Sarah Jane Smith, Professor Claire Surr, Dr Chloe Bradwell
Funder: internally funded
