The HOPES 2 Study

  • Research type

    Research Study

  • Full title

    Helping older people with mental health needs to engage with social care: Enhancing support worker skills through a prototype learning and development intervention. (The HOPES 2 Study)

  • IRAS ID

    299157

  • Contact name

    Louise Newbould

  • Contact email

    Louise.newbould@york.ac.uk

  • Sponsor organisation

    University of York

  • Duration of Study in the UK

    0 years, 11 months, 28 days

  • Research summary

    Background

    Older people living with dementia and complex mental health needs often find it hard to accept outside help. Sometimes people will reject the care verbally or physically, which can result in them being labelled as a ‘difficult person’. Providing care in these situations can be hard and as a result, relationships between the individuals and service providers can sometimes fall apart.
    Our previous research suggests that “specialist support workers” within community mental health services may help older people living with dementia or with complex mental health needs to accept social care. However, these specialist support workers often say that they do not have the chance to learn or share knowledge, strategies and skills between themselves.

    Purpose of the research

    To develop a way of helping support workers to share and develop their knowledge of ways of reducing resistance to care.

    What we will do

    A) Describe what the new learning will include
    We will examine what has already been written about developing learning for support workers, and will speak to practitioners in this area to ask them what should be included in the learning, how it should be delivered and what format it should take.
    B) Co-producing the learning
    We will combine the findings from (1), together with learning from the HOPES 1 study, to create a new learning resource. This will be achieved through a workshop with practitioners in support work, and through discussions with service users. Follow-up discussions will allow further detailed work on what we have learned.
    C) Delivering the learning
    The learning will be delivered in one site to allow us to see how it works in real situations. We will then explore how people feel about delivering and receiving this intervention in order to refine the learning.

  • REC name

    West of Scotland REC 4

  • REC reference

    21/WS/0081

  • Date of REC Opinion

    12 Aug 2021

  • REC opinion

    Further Information Favourable Opinion