14th Huron County CCC Meeting

This was a big meeting. All of our Discovery recruitment materials are ready to be distributed and we are planning to begin our Discovery interviews and sessions within the next few weeks.

At this meeting, we prepared for Discovery by sharing tips and strategies for leading successful interviews/focus groups and keeping discussions positive and appreciative. We decided to skip our May meeting since we are all busy with Discovery, and we will meet back in June to debrief.

I am excited to provide you with an update on our Discovery when we meet again in June.

13th Huron County CCC

Having finalized Discovery plans, we move into developing a itemized ‘to-do’ list of where we are headed next. We determined our pool of possible participants is approximately 150 persons with dementia and family care partners, and 120 staff from multiple agencies within the Huron County. We are finally seeing how our work might translate into real action.

Welcome!

Thank you for visiting the Partnerships in Dementia Care (PIDC) Alliance blog.

The PiDC Alliance is a collaborative research network and research initiative focused on improving the dementia care experience for persons with dementia, family members, and staff in both long-term care and the community.

For more information on the work of PiDC Alliance, visit the About section of this site.

This space is intended to provide regular updates, share resources, and disseminate learnings from the PiDC Alliance.

If you would like to contribute to the blog, please contact Zara Rafferty, Knowledge Translation Specialist for the PiDC Alliance: zeraffer [at] uwaterloo [dot] ca

12th Huron County CCC meeting

Happy Anniversary! The Huron County CCC has been meeting for one year now.
As our Discovery planning is become more finalized and ‘real’, we feel we are making progress and are finally working towards something tangible. As the members say, we can “see a light at the end of the tunnel”.

Having moved out of the first year, we have the perspective to know that we needed to spend time Dawning, where we build relationships (authentic partnerships) and gain the knowledge necessary to support the rest of the AI journey. We discuss how we feel comfortable enough with one another to share openly and safely within the group. What great meetings we have been having!

One interesting thing that we learned this month is that there are various ethics and financial restrictions and protocols that surround research within community groups. For example, we wanted to avoid sending Discovery recruitment material to clients registered with multiple agencies but were stumped on how to do this without violating privacy regulations. Our group began working on developing a protocol that would help widen the circle of care in order to ethically alleviate duplicate addresses on multiple mailing lists. What a great protocol - perhaps other community groups will find it helpful.

11th Huron County CCC Meeting

Happy New Year!

Our icebreaker this week encouraged us to make appreciative resolutions - things we want to continue or learn from. We all realised that creating a work life balance is of utmost importance. Actually, we ended up revising our Discovery questions (again) based on this discussion.

This rest if this meeting was spent finalising the details of our Discovery recruitment strategy and revising the Discovery questions. There are so many little details that need to be considered. We also laughed a lot and had fun. The group continues to become more comfortable and trusting of each other which makes for comfortable and genuine relationships - the true foundation for authentic partnerships.

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.