VIPs-A breakthrough in Dementia Research a partnership between European Care and The University of Bradford.
Saturday 13 Jun 2009
EC Group is delighted to announce a further extension of our partnerships with our business and academic colleagues and to enter into our next phase of dementia service development.
After over a year of collaborative work, the DDS (European Care's Dementia Development Services) in partnership with the world renowned Bradford Dementia Group are ready to move forward with the trial introduction of the "improving dementia care in care homes" framework (VIPS) in eight homes across the group.
Paul Smith, our Head of Dementia Development services, along with Professor Dawn Booker, have taken the original publication of VIPS and re-worked it into a self assessment and development framework which is operated exclusively for European Care Group.
The trial, in eight homes, is the first of its kind and will also be featured as an action research project. Essentially a four month assessment, planning and action tool, the VIPS framework allows our managers and staff to truly measure themselves against key elements of true person centred care - to appraise and plan their progress towards person focused responsiveness and to demonstrate at the end of the program the results of their journey into excellence in dementia care provision.
When VIPS is coupled with Dementia Care Mapping (DCM) it will allow EC Group to be the pioneer of evidence based, research led care in the industry.
Paul Smith said "This is the beginning of an extremely exciting but very challenging phase in EC Group's development, it puts us at the cutting edge of dementia care practice and further leads us to a truly individualised service for those receiving our care and their families and friends. Having every home assessing and developing itself with support and guidance is the ultimate aim - if we want our staff to deliver person centred care they must see person centred leadership".
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