Case study: Taking part in nursing home research

“We joined ENRICH to improve the daily living of residents in nursing homes.”

Anthea Reid, is Registered Manager of Robert Harvey House, a nursing home in Birmingham, and has been an active member of ENRICH (Enabling Research in Care Homes) since 2017.

The staff, residents and their families support research in the form of questionnaires, interviews, intervention studies and research advisory groups. Sonnet is one exampleof the dementia-focused research they have been involved in.

This study team worked with care homes to understand the best way to measure residents' levels of social connections. They then devised a measure and returned to the care homes to test it. The measure which takes the form of a questionnaire, was
tested by having conversations with residents and later gaining a trusted member of staff or family member's perspective on the residents' social connection levels.

Anthea (pictured), said: "We joined ENRICH to improve the daily living of our - and other - residents in nursing homes. Unless people get actively involved in research then we can't make meaningful changes that are proven to enrich lives."

Anthea feels strongly that other homes should get on board with running research studies if they can: "It gives you a wide insight into what studies are happening and how they work, and sometimes you get great tools that you wouldn’t otherwise come
across, and ideas that you can use after the research is finished.

"Dementia Action Week is a great opportunity to raise the profile of dementia research - for things to improve we all need to be open, responsive and innovative."