Taking time: The temporal politics of dementia, care and support in the neighbourhood.

Dementia is a global health challenge and currently the focus of a coordinated international response articulated through the notion of 'dementia-friendly communities and initiatives' (DFCIs). Yet, while increasing research attention has been paid to the social and spatial dimensions to life with dementia in a neighbourhood setting, the temporalities of dementia have been largely overlooked. This article sets out different aspects of the lived experience of time for people with dementia and unpaid carers, before exploring the temporal politics of formal dementia care and support. The authors show that time is a site for material struggle and a marker of unequal relations of power. People with dementia and unpaid carers are disempowered through access to formal care, and this is illustrated in their loss of (temporal) autonomy and limited options for changing the conditions of the care received. The authors advocate for a time-space configured understanding of the relationship with neighbourhood and foreground a tempo-material understanding of dementia. Set against the backdrop of austerity policy in the UK, the findings reveal that ongoing budgetary restrictions have diminished the capacity for social care to mediate in questions of social justice and inequality, at times even compounding inequity.

People diagnosed with dementia in Sweden: What type of home care services and housing are they granted? A cross-sectional study.

AIMS: This study aims to examine what types of home care services and housing are granted to people with a dementia diagnosis and how these types are associated with socio-demographic factors (sex, age, marital status, native or foreign born, and regional area). METHODS: A cross-sectional study of all people diagnosed with dementia in three Swedish counties was conducted from the medical records in 2012. Logistic regression analysis was carried out to investigate associations between home care services and housing and socio-demographic variables. RESULTS: In total, 17,405 people had a dementia diagnosis, and the majority were women, aged 80+ years, and unmarried. Some 72% were living in ordinary housing and 28% lived in special housing. Of those who lived in ordinary housing, 50% did not receive any home care service. Not receiving any type of home care services was less common for older people and was also associated with being married and living in rural municipalities. The most common home care services granted were home help and personal care. Special housing was more common for older people, unmarried persons, and those living in rural municipalities. CONCLUSIONS: Most people with a dementia diagnosis were living in ordinary housing, and, surprisingly, half of those did not receive any type of home care service. This knowledge is essential for making the living conditions and needs of people living with dementia more visible and to provide good home care services for people with dementia and their families.

The lived neighborhood: understanding how people with dementia engage with their local environment.

ABSTRACTBackground:In this paper, we report progress on "Neighborhoods: our people, our places" an international study about how people living with dementia interact with their neighborhoods. The ideas of social health and citizenship are drawn upon to contextualize the data and make a case for recognizing and understanding the strengths and agency of people with dementia. In particular, we address the lived experience of the environment as a route to better understanding the capabilities, capacities, and competencies of people living with dementia. In doing this, our aim is to demonstrate the contribution of social engagement and environmental support to social health. METHODS: The study aims to "map" local spaces and networks across three field sites (Manchester, Central Scotland and Linkoping, Sweden). It employs a mix of qualitative and participatory approaches that include mobile and visual methods intended to create knowledge that will inform the design and piloting of a neighborhood-based intervention. RESULTS: Our research shows that the neighborhood plays an active role in the lives of people with dementia, setting limits, and constraints but also offering significant opportunities, encompassing forms of help and support as yet rarely discussed in the field of dementia studies. The paper presents new and distinctive insights into the relationship between neighborhoods and everyday life for people with dementia that have important implications for the debate on social health and policy concerning dementia friendly communities. CONCLUSION: We end by reflecting on the messages for policy and practice that are beginning to emerge from this on-going study.

Living Life and Doing Things Together: Collaborative Research With Couples Where One Partner Has a Diagnosis of Dementia.

The aim of this study is to identify relevant content for a self-management guide by using the outcomes of previous research in combination with knowledge and experiences from couples where one partner has a diagnosis of dementia. The study was carried out in three phases: (a) literature search of previous research related to well-being and couplehood in dementia; (b) interviews with couples with dementia based on the findings of the literature search; and (c) further authentication of the findings within expert groups of people with dementia and carers. For analysis of data, we used a hybrid approach of thematic analysis with combined deductive and inductive approaches. The findings of this study indicated that the four main themes "Home and Neighborhood," "Meaningful Activities and Relationships," "Approach and Empowerment," and "Couplehood" with related subthemes could be appropriate targets for a self-management guide for couples where one partner has a diagnosis of dementia.

Examining quality function deployment in safety promotion in Sweden.

The first-hand needs and demands of laypersons are not always considered when safety promotion programmes are being developed. We compared focal areas for interventions identified from residents' statements of safety needs with focal areas for interventions identified by local government professionals in a Swedish urban community certified by the international Safe Community movement supported by the World Health Organization. Quantitative and qualitative data on self-expressed safety needs from 787 housing residents were transformed into an intervention design, using the quality function deployment (QFD) technique and compared with the safety intervention programme developed by professionals at the municipality administrative office. The outcome of the comparison was investigated with regard to implications for the Safe Community movement. The QFD analysis identified the initiation and maintenance of social integrative processes in housing areas as the most highly prioritized interventions among the residents, but failed to highlight the safety needs of several vulnerable groups (the elderly, infants and persons with disabilities). The intervention programme designed by the public health professionals did not address the social integrative processes, but it did highlight the vulnerable groups. This study indicates that the QFD technique is suitable for providing residential safety promotion efforts with a quality orientation from the layperson's perspective. Views of public health professionals have to be included to ascertain that the needs of socially deprived residents are adequately taken into account. QFD can augment the methodological toolbox for safety promotion programmes, including interventions in residential areas.

Controlling the Uncontrollable: Patient Safety and Medication Management From the Perspective of Registered Nurses in Municipal Home Health Care.

Most adverse events in health care are related to medication management and they are almost always preventable. Increased knowledge of patient safety related to medication management in home health care is an urgent issue to provide safe care for all patients regardless of where the health care takes place. This study explored patient safety within medication management in municipal home health care. Vignettes were used as stimulus during qualitative interviews with registered nurses. Three main themes with related subthemes were identified as challenges to patient safety within medication management in home health care: (1) challenges to information transfer, (2) challenges related to delegation, and (3) challenges of advanced medical treatments in the home. The issue of transfer of information permeated our findings. Coordinating medications, delegating tasks, along with more advanced care require clear communication between care providers to be compatible with patient safety within medication management in home health care.

Getting lost with dementia: Encounters with the time-space of not knowing.

In this paper we explore the experience and implications of getting lost with dementia. While getting lost has become culturally emblematic of dementia, speaking as it does to a widespread fear of losing our place in the world, it is marked by an overall absence of critical attention. We argue that this critical hesitancy is part of a broader unease with 'dementing' that reveals a paradox in dementia scholarship as growing emphasis on strengths-based and capacity-oriented approaches to the condition shift attention away from episodes of disorientation, forgetting and unknowing that commonly arise after onset. We therefore explore getting lost with dementia, not only as a route to better understanding what happens during such events and the meaning it holds but also to consider the implications for a broader politics of the social inclusion of people living with dementia. Reporting findings from a five-year international study of the neighbourhood experiences of people with dementia, we suggest that through such experiences as getting lost, people with dementia have a unique and distinctive contribution to make to the ever-evolving character of public space and civic culture. In particular, we argue that getting lost and the subsequent recovery or reconstitution that ensues can help inform efforts to reimagine public space. This includes looking beyond risk reduction in responses to dementia and public and outdoor settings to consider how freedom of movement for people with dementia might be enhanced rather than curtailed. Our learning points to the value of making the process of dementing more visible and central to the politics and practices of social inclusion.

Residents' perspectives on safety support needs in different types of housing areas.

BACKGROUND: Knowledge about conditions that are understood to support safety is important for planning residential safety promotion in interactions with residents. How residents themselves perceive and reason about their own safety needs has seldom been investigated in Scandinavia. AIM: To identify factors perceived to be necessary to feel safe by residents in areas with blocks of flats and detached houses. METHODS: Residents in a Swedish municipality were asked an open-ended question on the research topic by a mail survey; 787 residents provided narrative data that were fed into a summative qualitative and quantitative content analysis. RESULTS: A stable social structure in the housing area was perceived to be the central factor in a safety-supportive residential environment. Whereas maintenance of good and reassuring relations was emphasised in detached housing areas, support for management of poor or even fear-provoking neighbour relations was requested from areas with blocks of flats. This finding emphasises the need to reduce the differential exposure to safety-related factors in the living environment. CONCLUSIONS: The results of our study encourage the continued use of a setting-orientated safety promotion approach in which residents and other stakeholders are involved. The policy recommendation that can be drawn from the study is that both the subjective and objective dimensions of safety should be identified and considered when developing local safety promotion interventions in community contexts.

Health promotion initiative: A dementia-friendly local community in Sweden.

Dementia is a great public health concern worldwide. Despite this, little is known from a health-promoting perspective about dementia in general as a public health issue, in dialog with people living with dementia, applicable at individual, group, and societal levels with regard to policies and practice. This study therefore aims to explore the experiences related to living with dementia in the local community by advancing a health-promoting perspective. Semi-structured individual and group interviews were conducted with participants (n = 22) with lived, professional, and personal experiences of dementia living in a medium-sized municipality in Sweden. Transcripts were analyzed by thematic analysis. Four themes emerged: health promotion through knowledge and public awareness, health promotion through opportunities to be active, health promotion through meaningful meeting places, and health promotion through improvements in the welfare system. We found that more knowledge and public awareness about dementia are needed to advance a health-promoting perspective and increase the prominence of dementia as a public health issue. Further research and policy need to focus more on how professionals in dementia care practice could be involved in promoting health and well-being for people with dementia.

'Overjoyed that I can go outside': Using walking interviews to learn about the lived experience and meaning of neighbourhood for people living with dementia.

This study explores the relationships between people living with dementia and their neighbourhood as they venture out from home on a regular and often routine basis. Here, we report findings from the Swedish field site of an international 5-year project: Neighbourhoods: our people, our places. The aims of this study were to investigate the lived experience of the neighbourhood for people with dementia and through this to better understand the meaning that neighbourhood held for the participants. In this study, we focus on the walking interviews which were conducted with 14 community-dwelling people with dementia (11 men and 3 women) and were analysed using an interpretative phenomenological method. Four themes were revealed from these interviews: life narratives embedded within neighbourhood; the support of selfhood and wellbeing through movement; the neighbourhood as an immediate social context; and restorative connections to nature. These themes were distilled into the 'essence' of what neighbourhood meant for the people we interviewed: A walkable area of subjective significance and social opportunity in which to move freely and feel rejuvenated. We have found that the neighbourhood for community-dwelling people with dementia holds a sense of attachment and offers the potential for freedom of movement. Our research indicates that a dementia diagnosis doesn't necessarily reduce this freedom of movement. The implications for practice and policy are considered: future research should explore and pay closer attention to the diverse living conditions of people living with dementia, and not least the particular challenges faced by people living alone with dementia.

Neighbourhoods as relational places for people living with dementia.

An increase in the number of people living independently with dementia across the developed world has focused attention on the relevance of neighbourhood spaces for enabling or facilitating good social health and wellbeing. Taking the lived experiences and daily realities of people living with dementia as a starting point, this paper contributes new understanding about the relevance of local places for supporting those living with the condition. The paper outlines findings from a study of the neighbourhood experiences, drawing on new data collected from a creative blend of qualitatively-driven mixed methods with people living in a diverse array of settings across three international settings. The paper details some of the implications of neighbourhoods as sites of social connection based on material from 67 people living with dementia and 62 nominated care-partners. It demonstrates how neighbourhoods are experienced as relational places and considers how people living with dementia contribute to the production of such places through engagement and interaction, and in ways that may be beneficial to social health. We contend that research has rarely focused on the subjective, experiential and 'everyday' social practices that contextualise neighbourhood life for people living with dementia. In doing so, the paper extends empirical and conceptual understanding of the relevance of neighbourhoods as relational sites of connection, interaction, and social engagement for people living with dementia.

Correlates of local safety-related concerns in a Swedish Community: a cross-sectional study.

BACKGROUND: Crime in a neighbourhood has been recognized as a key stressor in the residential environment. Fear of crime is related to risk assessment, which depends on the concentration of objective risk in time and space, and on the presence of subjective perceived early signs of imminent hazard. The aim of the study was to examine environmental, socio-demographic, and personal correlates of safety-related concerns at the local level in urban communities. The specific aim was to investigate such correlates in contiguous neighbourhoods in a Swedish urban municipality. METHODS: A cross-sectional study design was used to investigate three neighbourhood settings with two pair-wise conterminous but socially contrasting areas within each setting. Crime data were retrieved from police records. Study data were collected through a postal questionnaire distributed to adult residents (n = 2476) (response rate 56%). Composite dimensions of perceived residential safety were derived through a factor analysis. Logistic regression analysis was used to examine associations between high-level scores of the three safety-related dimensions and area-level crime rate, being a victim of crime, area reputation, gender, age, education, country of birth, household civil status and type of housing. RESULTS: Three composite dimensions of perceived residential safety were identified: (I) structural indicators of social disorder; (II) contact with disorderly behavior; and (III) existential insecurity. We found that area-level crime rates and individual-level variables were associated with the dimensions structural indicators of social disorder and existential insecurity, but only individual-level variables were associated with the dimension contact with disorderly behavior. Self-assessed less favorable area reputation was found to be strongly associated with all three factors. Being female accorded existential insecurity more than being a victim of crime. CONCLUSION: We have identified environmental, socio-demographic, and personal correlates of safety-related concerns in contiguous neighbourhoods in a Swedish community. The results of this study suggest that residents' self-assessed area reputation is an important underlying mechanism of perceived safety. We also found a difference in crime rates and safety-related concerns between areas with blocks of flats compared with small-scale areas although the neighbourhoods were close geographically.

Proactive healthcare for frail elderly persons: study protocol for a prospective controlled primary care intervention in Sweden.

INTRODUCTION: The provision of healthcare services is not dedicated to promoting maintenance of function and does not target frail older persons at high risk of the main causes of morbidity and mortality. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effects of a proactive medical and social intervention in comparison with conventional care on a group of persons aged 75 and older selected by statistical prediction. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: In a pragmatic multicentre primary care setting (n=1600), a prediction model to find elderly (75+) persons at high risk of complex medical care or hospitalisation is used, followed by proactive medical and social care, in comparison with usual care. The study started in April 2017 with a run-in period until December 2017, followed by a 2-year continued intervention phase that will continue until the end of December 2019. The intervention includes several tools (multiprofessional team for rehabilitation, social support, medical care home visits and telephone support). Primary outcome measures are healthcare cost, number of hospital care episodes, hospital care days and mortality. Secondary outcome measures are number of outpatient visits, cost of social care and informal care, number of prescribed drugs, health-related quality of life, cost-effectiveness, sense of security, functional status and ability. We also study the care of elderly persons in a broader sense, by covering the perspectives of the patients, the professional staff and the management, and on a political level, by using semistructured interviews, qualitative methods and a questionnaire. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: Approved by the regional ethical review board in Linköping (Dnr 2016/347-31). The results will be presented in scientific journals and scientific meetings during 2019-2022 and are planned to be used for the development of future care models. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT03180606.

Exploring experiences among adopters during the diffusion of a novel dance intervention in Sweden.

There is a demand for interventions aimed at adolescent girls with psychosomatic problems. In 2013, positive results were reported from a dance intervention programme addressing girls with internalizing problems. The research team behind the intervention immediately received requests from municipalities and county councils interested in using the intervention. From an implementation point of view it is unclear what made the intervention spread without an active plan. The aim of this study was to explore adopters' experiences about the diffusion and initiation of a public health intervention targeting adolescent girls with internalizing problems. Interviews were conducted with 12 people who were engaged in initiating the intervention in different settings. Data were analysed using conventional content analysis, yielding three categories: perceived appeal and trustworthiness, convenient information, and contextual factors. The results reflected that the participants found that there was a need for an intervention and found the dance intervention to be evidence based and not too complex to perform. Further, there was available information on the project which could easily be distributed to decision makers and others. When initiating the intervention, factors related to economy, possibility for collaboration and recruitment were of importance.