Editorial: Innovative Practice

Abstract

During the last decade, there has been increased recognition of the need and desirability of including people with dementia and their family carers and supporters as key stakeholders and active participants in all stages in the research process. Different models of involvement have developed, although it is widely accepted that progress has been uneven and that work still needs to be done (Bartlett, Hick, Houston, Gardiner, & Wallace, 2013; Charlesworth, 2018; Hayes, Costello, Nurock, Cornwall, & Francis, 2018). This issue of Innovative Practice takes three different accounts of involvement to highlight different examples of the importance of involving people with dementia and family carers in the full range of decisions, from technology aimed at improving people’s everyday lives to developing research protocols and programme implementation. The first article (Coetzer, 2019) is a case study of Mrs V (a pseudonym) who was referred for neuropsychiatric support after experiencing a stroke. She was particularly anxious about being unable to tell the time. Her family helped adapt a clock which indicated different time periods (morning, afternoon, evening, night) and meal times. The adapted clock was initially very effective but, as Mrs V’s cognitive abilities declined, its efficacy was reduced. Coetzer suggests that the clock example illustrates how tailored assistive technologies to which carers have contributed may result in better acceptance or ‘buy in’ and offer solutions where there are no existing technologies. At the same time, it needs to be recognised that carers will need support if the efficacy of any technologies to which they have contributed is reduced as the person’s condition progresses. The remaining contributions in this section (Giebel, Roe, Hodgson, Britt, & Clarkson, 2019; Swarbrick, Open Doors, EDUCATE, Davis, & Keady, 2019) draw on experiences from much larger scale studies. The second article by Swarbrick and colleagues (2019) describes the ‘CO-researcher INvolvement and Engagement in Dementia’ Model, or the COINED Model for short, which was co-produced with and alongside people living with dementia. The model was developed during the application stage of the Neighbourhoods