Rethinking Environments in Dementia Care Homes (REDem)- paving the way for equality in care delivery

Research problem and specific questionsDespite Swedish national dementia strategy emphasizing the importance of dementia care home environments to support daily life, no scientific-based guidelines exist on how to create care home environments for foreign-born residents of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds (LCB).

The overall project aim is to combine scientific based knowledge and empirical knowledge for the development of working methods in how to best integrate organizational, physical, and social environments in dementia care homes to meet the needs of residents from different LCB.

The project focuses on two key questions:How do physical and social environments in dementia care homes promote daily and cultural activities in residents with dementia from different LCB?How do organizational environments (structure and process) of dementia care homes support the use of physical and social environments for residents with dementia from different LCB?Data and methodsIn Subproject 1, we will conduct a literature review to investigate how dementia care home environments are intended to meet the needs of residents from different LCB.

We will identify the interactions among context, mechanism, and outcomes in the literature.

Then workshops will be held with the professionals from dementia care homes to discuss how the review findings are related to current physical and social environments.In Subproject 2, we will begin with objectively assessing current environments in dementia care homes.

Then, we will conduct interviews to explore the context and mechanisms underlying the use of physical and social environments to meet the needs of residents from different LCB.

A workshop with the managers of dementia care homes will be held to discuss the findings and develop methods to implement relevant findings to improve current dementia care environments for residents from different LCB.Relevance and utilizationForeign-born inhabitants with dementia in Sweden are a vulnerable group.

The knowledge in how to best integrate physical, social, and organizational environments in dementia care homes to meet the needs of persons from different LCB will pave the way for an equality of care delivery.Plan for project realizationThe project is a collaboration between Örebro University, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm Municipality, Örebro Municipality and Halmstad Municipality.

FORTE will contribute with salaries for the project group.