10th Huron County CCC Meeting

Happy Holidays!

This is our last meeting of 2011.

As I mentioned in my last post, some of our members set out to 'pilot test' our Discovery questions with their clients (persons with dementia and their care partners). Today, we reviewed the responses from the mini-pilot of the Discovery questions with the clients with dementia. The discussion yielded some interesting results. It was noted that the clients with dementia who participated in the pilot testing felt good because they were helping to make a difference. We continued to edit the Discovery questions based on their suggestions. We find that with more reflection, new ideas always emerge.

9th Huron County CCC Meeting

Eureka!

Our group just had what they call an Eureka Moment. Up until this point, we were known as the CCAC/Saint Elizabeth Culture Change Coalition since they were the organisations that originally made up our membership. However, as our membership grew beyond the CCAC and Saint Elizabeth, these new members (from the Alzheimer Society, ONE CARE, etc) did not know where they fit into this coalition. Was their organisations involved in a culture change initiative, or were they just helping Saint Elizabeth and the CCAC? After much reflection, we came to realise that our Coalition is not just about the South West CCAC and Saint Elizabeth, but rather, we represented several agencies from with the Huron County that support persons with dementia and their families. Each agency has a specific and critical role to play, and often these roles over lap and intertwine. We decided that a name change was necessary and came up with the new name, the Huron County CCC. This then led to a conceptualisation on our purpose:

We are a collaboration of organisations that are drawing upon our strengths in order to improve home and community care for people with dementia, their families, and the staff working in these settings.

The establishment of a new identity helped us to have a better sense of who we are, what we are doing, and how we are getting there. Sometimes you have to take a step back in order to move forward.

At our meeting, we decided to pilot test some of our Discovery questions with a group of clients with dementia. I mentioned to the group that the CARE Profile, which was adapted by the Bloomington Cove CCC is currently being piloted in long-term care homes and I asked if we were ready to revisit our revisions to the CARE Profile. However, the group determined that we are not ready to do this. They wanted to hear back from our Discovery before we created a tool that measures the care experience.

It is great that the group continues to feel comfortable voicing their concerns and thoughts. This is true Authentic Partnerships at work.

8th Huron County CCC Meeting

We began our meeting with a fun ice breaker that really got us laughing and having fun. We noted that having fun, and focusing on the positive (appreciative) aspects of life is important, especially since the dementia journey can sometimes be a very negative or challenging one. 

As we continued to plan our Discovery, we realized the importance of clarifying confidentiality issues before we move forward with our project. This speaks to how critical it is that we work collaboratively and talk openly with each other. We began developing a clear timeline for our Discovery. This helped us to feel that we were finally moving forward with our Discovery. Developing concrete plans helped the group feel like they were finally ready to talk to others (colleagues and/or their clients and their families) about what we our CCC is trying to achieve.  Thier involvement in our process is so vital, so it is good for us to be able to 'spread the word' as much as possible.  

7th CCAC/Saint Elizabeth CCC

As I wrote about in my last post, we spent time in our last meeting critically reflecting on where we are and what we are doing. The group felt unsure of their role and our purpose. As a result, we thought it was important to take time in this meeting to regroup and refocus our efforts. As such, we opened this meeting with an 'ice breaker' that asked us to reflect on what it is that brings us through the door (see this, and other types of ice breakers by clicking here or visiting the Dawning toolkit on the PiDC website).

Lorna, Zara, and I then shared with the group the newly developed 'AI Journey (Arrow Tool)' which included the new Dawning phase. We informed them that we shared this tool with the other CCC site, Bloomington cove, which also found it helpful to regroup and get a sense of what we have been doing and where we are going. We let our CCC know that these tools would not have been developed without their open dialogue. I think we all felt good knowing that we are really learn from this process and as a result, we will be able to help others who undergo a similar culture change initiative. 

This meeting was also important since we began to logistically plan our Discovery. We completed an exercise where we explored the objectives of our Discovery (the What) and our anticipated outcomes (What for) (click here or visit the Discovery Toolkit on the PiDC website). We then broke out into small groups and used the Discovery Planning chart to plan our Discovery for clients, their families, and staff.

6th CCAC/Saint Elizabeth CCC Meeting

Zara, our current Knowledge Translation Specialist, was recently hired and attended our meeting this month. Welcome, Zara!

We began revising our Discovery questions to make them more accessible and relevant to our group. We recognised that the ‘circle of care’ for community clients may be broader, including friends, neighbours, relatives and so forth, and that relationships are very important at all levels – in the community, in long-term care homes, and in families.

At this meeting, we explored whether we wanted to ‘launch’ our project to the community at large, which yielded a larger discussion around whether or not we were ready to promote our project. By using open dialogue, we found that many of our members were feeling a bit lost. We have been meeting monthly, and have been working hard at establishing trusting relationships (authentic partnerships). We have been learning a lot about our partnership and the communities in which we are situated. We have had opportunities to learn about AI and the other philosophies driving our project. Yet, we felt like we were not really accomplishing anything that we initially set out to accomplish (Discover). Although this meeting may at first seem like a low point, this in fact was one of the most critical meetings to date. This meeting forced me and the other PiDC researchers to reflect on our process and recognise that while we were not making much way in terms of our Discovery (the first phase in AI) we were in fact working hard at something else, something that we later called Dawning. We recognised that what we had been doing was laying the foundation for Discovery. This Dawning phase is absolutely critical when using a participatory and collaborative approach to AI (click here to learn more about Dawning). As a result, we began creating tools that helped to better explain our AI process, which now involves five steps (click here to see the Arrows).

What a great meeting. This shows how important critical reflection and open dialogue are.

5th CCAC/Saint Elizabeth CCC Meeting

As the membership of our group continued to grow and I struggled to understand how all of these community organisations and groups relate with one another. As a result, we began our meeting with an exercise that ‘mapped the community’ (click here for this exercise in the Dawning Toolkit, on the PiDC website).The mapping exercise helped us to clarify CCC members’ positions and agency acronyms and histories in our communities.  Other potential community partners with which to build relationships were also identified.

The meeting was more action oriented, as we tried our hand with appreciative interviews. We broke out into partners and conducted Discovery interviews which were then shared with the group. We then analysed our responses and core themes emerged. It will be interesting to see how they relate to the themes that will emerge from our larger Discovery.

4th CCAC/Saint Elizabeth CCC Meeting

Today we welcomed a member with dementia and his wife to our group. 

In my last post, I noted how we generated great feedback from our group Discovery exercise. Today, we reviewed the four key themes of our discussion and came up with a fantastic acronym, the WIRL, and discussed how it represented a ‘compass’ guiding our CCC (W= working together, I= including and respecting, R= recognizing and knowing, and L= learning and sharing). 

We also explored possible strategies for our Discovery phase (e.g. interview, focus groups, and written accounts of positive care experiences) involving multiple stakeholders (persons with dementia, family members, case managers, Day Program staff, spiritual leaders, etc).  The transition to needing/using community care services was identified as a potential topic for further study by our CCC.

We're certainly accomplishing a lot!

3rd CCAC/Saint Elizabeth CCC Meeting

Today, our CCC welcomed even more new members – a representative from the Alzheimer Society of Huron County and several Saint Elizabeth personal support workers. Consistent attendance at our meetings is still a challenge, so we discussed ways to include the perspectives of all members, particularly those unable to attend meetings.

This was a really critical meeting, as we began to explore Appreciative Inquiry (AI), specifically, the Discovery phase. Learning about AI created a ‘light bulb’ moment, where it shined a light on how to approach challenges in our work and personal lives. We completed a group Discovery experience where we explored the experience of being included and excluded in a partnership and challenged assumptions about people with dementia (See the DawningToolkit on the PiDC website). The discussion and insights that emerged from this exercise was amazing. We continued revising the CARE Profile questionnaire and discussed how we may want to pilot the survey before administering it to Saint Elizabeth/South West CCAC members.

2nd CCAC/Saint Elizabeth CCC Meeting

Last month I introduced you to our CCAC/Saint Elizabeth CCC and I am continuing to provide you with updates on our meetings.

Our meeting in March had to be cancelled due to poor weather conditions, so today was our second meeting. We are lucky to have someone new join our Coalition, a representative from ONE CARE Home and community Support services located in the Huron county.

Today, we continued to brainstorm ways to enhance the involvement of persons with dementia and their care partners and revised the principles guiding our CCC. The main task for this meeting was the review of the CARE Profiles. We found that many of the the questions on the questionnaires either needed to be slightly revised, or removed all together, as they were not applicable to a community care setting. We decided to continue revising the questions at our next meeting. Lastly, we explored possible solutions for the challenge of having all CCC members present at our meetings. We are all busy people, so finding a consisting meeting date that suits our needs is a top priority.

1st CCAC/Saint Elizabeth Culture Change Coalition Meeting

Hello from the CCAC/Saint Elizabeth Culture Change Coalition (CCC)!

Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Jennifer Gillies, postdoctoral fellow with MAREP and the PiDC Alliance and co-researcher with the CCAC/Saint Elizabeth CCC. Our Partnership in Dementia Care Alliance (PiDC) blog has just been created (Thanks, Zara!) so I wanted to use this opportunity to fill you in on what happens at our Huron County CCC meetings.

Today was our first CCCAC/Saint Elizabeth Culture Change Coalition meeting. We spent most of the time gettting to know each other. We also learned about the larger project, and collectively created the principles that would guide our participation in the coalition. As you may know, our CCC is one of four research sites in the PiDC alliance, yet is the only community care setting. Our committee consists of 13 members -  various staff members from the South West CCAC and Saint Elizabeth, as well as researchers from MAREP and the PiDC Alliance. In order to ensure we include the perspectives of all major stakeholders in our coalition, we explored options for including persons with dementia and their family members as part of our CCC. At our meeting, the researchers mentioned how we would like to have a sense of the current community care experience in order to measure the impact of our culture change initiative. A survey called the CARE Profile, which measures the care experience for long-term care staff, residents, and their families, was introduced as a tool that may be able to help us measure the care experience throughout our process. Since it was designed to be used in the long-term care context, we discussed how we, as a group, may want to adapt the CARE Profile to be applicable in community dementia care settings.

It was a great meeting and I am excited to meet again next month. I'll keep you posted.