Maastricht partners visit to hear about outcomes of NICHE-Leeds

We were delighted to welcome the partners that inspired our NICHE project to Leeds in October. NICHE-Leeds is based on the Dutch Academic Collaborative Centre on Care for Older People - ACC-COP. 

This Living - Lab model focuses on structural multidisciplinary collaboration between research, policy, education and practice to improve quality of long-term care in nursing homes. This activity undertaken is done so within a  multidisciplinary partnership between academia and collaborating partners. It is vital the collaborating partners are practitioners (such as registered nurses, physicians, psychologists, physiotherapists and occupational therapists), managers, researchers and teaching staff in order to embed scientific research into everyday practice.

Over the four days our Maastrict guests visited the care homes involved in the research and also contributed and listened to inspiring presentations about the activity and the work being undertaken to make a difference for the people who live or work in care homes. Staff were particulary inspired to hear from Professor Jan Hamers, (Maastricht University), the founder of the Living Lab approach and pioneer in this field.

At Pennington Court Care Home we have been focusing on how oral care strategies can enable and motivate residents to perform their own mouth care and prevent or overcome mouth care responsive behaviours in residents.

Download the Oral Care Know How document to find out about the research findings and some of the strategies we have been putting into practice.

NICHE-Leeds is an innovative partnership between the University of Leeds, Leeds Care Association, Westward Care, Springfield Healthcare and Leeds City Council.