Background: In the UK, care home staff training tends to focus on manual handling, fire safety, and safeguarding, rather than understanding ways to communicate with older people, including those living with dementia (Older People’s Commissioner for Wales, 2014). Previous research indicates projects with artist practitioners engaging people living with dementia in care homes also benefitted staff through learning new skills and increasing their understanding of the residents as individuals.
Objectives: This project aimed to develop and test a ‘Creative Conversations’ staff development programme using an arts-in-health approach to improve the quality of interaction between carers and people living with dementia and the knowledge and skills of the dementia care workforce. 'Creative Conversations’ is based on and takes its inspiration from two earlier programmes: the Descartes project (Zeilig et al.,2015) and The Arts and Older People Project (Killick, 2015). The project was a partnership between Bangor University, Dementia Positive, and Flintshire County Council Social Services.
Methods: A collaborative approach ensured that those thought to benefit from the staff development programme (care staff, people living with dementia, older people, family carers and Social Services) were involved in the design and implementation. A pragmatic stepped-wedge cluster randomised trial explored the feasibility and impact of ‘Creative Conversations’ on the quality of interaction between care staff and residents, knowledge and skills, job satisfaction, and burnout of care staff, and social care-related quality of life of residents with dementia.
Results: This paper presents the study results including a discussion of the challenges and successes of the research design to enable the sharing of best-practice for evaluating complex interventions in care home settings.
Conclusion: An arts-in-health approach to care staff development offers an alternative to traditional training. Important implications have been learned regarding the feasibility of a stepped-wedge cluster randomised trial in care homes.