Group Operations Director Congratulates Team on becoming dementia care mappers

Micky Shirley Group Operations Director is delighted to be able to  share some exciting news, in that we now have 3 trained Dementia Care mappers ( DCM^TM) within the Future Care Group who completed a course with Bradford University and will shortly be starting to carry out Dementia Care mapping within our homes.

For those not aware- What is Dementia Care Mapping?

Dementia Care Mapping ( DCM^TM) is a set of observational tools that have been used in formal Dementia care settings such as hospital wards, care home settings and day care facilities in the UK since 1991. DCM is recognised by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.

It has been used both as an instrument for developing Person -centred care (PCC) practice, and as a tool in research. It developed from the pioneering work from the late Professor Tom Kitwood on Person Centred Care. In his final book, Dementia Reconsidered, Kitwood described DCM as, “a serious attempt to take the standpoint of the person with dementia, using a combination of empathy and observational skill” (p 4 .16).

DCM is both a tool and a process. The tool is the observations and the coding frames. This is the intensive in-depth ,real time observations over a number of hours of people with dementia living in formal care settings. The process is the use of DCM as a driver for development of person centred practice, including careful preparation of staff and management teams, feedback of the results of the map, action planning by the staff team on the basis of this feedback, the monitoring of progress over time, and then the cycle of remapping commences. During a DCM evaluation a trained observer ( a mapper) may focus on one person or track a small number of people with dementia ( participants) typically up to five. This occurs continuously over a representative time period.

For those of you that are aware of mapping ,you will know this is an internationally recognised tool and you need to be trained to be able to carry out the map. Bradford University also deliver a shortened version of this to CQC inspectors called the SOFI.

A huge congratulations to Julie Taylor, Gavin Pathmarajan and Sherrie Hume. We are very proud of you all.