SORTED study
Research type
Research Study
Full title
SORTED: Improving SOcial care pRactice in integrating mouth and Teeth care in personal care for pEople living with Dementia
IRAS ID
299978
Contact name
Dia Soilemezi
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Portsmouth
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 3 months, 30 days
Research summary
Many people living with dementia are able to look after themselves but as dementia progresses, their family and/or home care workers are likely to help with personal care. This might include dental care such as reminding the person to clean their teeth or take care of any dentures. For people living with dementia who get home care support, a care plan will be developed to outline the type of personal care they need. For many people, this will follow an assessment from the local council and probably one by a manager or supervisor working for a home care company. However, we do not know if assessments and care plans include mouth or dental care and, if they do, we do not know what they say.
We want to find out how assessments and care plans capture details of mouth and dental care and how home care workers know what they can do to promote good mouth and dental care.
We will explore this by:
1) reviewing anonymised assessments and care plans of people living with dementia to understand how mouth/dental care is addressed. We will look both at assessments and plans created by both local councils and home care agencies.
2) interviewing people living with dementia and their family carers and asking them to share their individual care plan in order to see how the plans address (or not) dental care, and what happens in practice.
3) interviewing social workers/social care practitioners and home care workers about their views and practices around this part of personal care.
This information will help us co-develop an accessible output for social work and other social care professionals to support people living with dementia.
We also will let practitioners and people affected by dementia know about our findings in several ways.REC name
Social Care REC
REC reference
21/IEC08/0032
Date of REC Opinion
12 Nov 2021
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion