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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Care homes lay assessor project
— using volunteers to improve the quality of life of older people living in care homes | | Author(s) | Kenneth Walter Dolbear |
| Journal title | Working with Older People, vol 20, no 2, 2016 |
| Publisher | Emerald, 2016 |
| Pages | pp 94-100 |
| Source | www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/wwop.htm |
| Keywords | Residents [care homes] ; Quality of life ; Care homes ; Voluntary workers ; Advocacy ; Inspection ; Pilot ; Bristol. |
| Annotation | This paper outlines the learning from an innovative approach to using volunteers as lay assessors to secure improvements in the quality of life of older people in care homes. The paper describes the implementation of pilot lay assessor scheme in Bristol, and systematically explores the learning from this case study. The paper concludes that despite a number of important challenges and limitations, a lay assessor approach, particularly when conducted in close co-operation with a local council, can indeed provide demonstrable quality of life benefits for older people in closed institutions such as care homes. The case study highlights key implications for practice including: possibility to recruit, motivate and train volunteers for a lay assessor scheme; working with a local council and providers of care homes to produce real improvements in quality of life; lay assessor schemes as an important way of "shining a light" into closed institutions; defining quality of life and balancing this with institutional attitudes towards risk can be extremely challenging; and working with care home managers to provide them with ideas and support that is effective in bringing about meaningful change. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-160603203 A |
| Classmark | KX: F:59: KW: QV: IQ: 3U: 4UC: 8AB |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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