Using professional artists, Creative Care trains carers
of older people in residential homes and day centres to provide
creative activities for their customers, some of whom suffer
from dementia.
Feedback from carers and care home managers continues to indicate
a number of positive outcomes. These include increased socialisation
of participants, less attention seeking from participants, reduced
requests for medication in some cases, positive changes in the
relationship of the carers and those they care for, leading to
greater job satisfaction.
Artlink is currently running a pilot Creative Carers Training Programme
focussing on dementia at Hawthorn Drive Residential Home and Crabbe
Street Day Care Centre, Ipswich. As well as staff from both centres,
Occupational Therapy Assistants are also taking part in the training
programme allowing for cross-sector working.
Artist led in-house sessions will take place in September – October
with the final evaluation session in December.
Artlink commissioned a Reflective Study of the Creative Carers
programme in order to provide guidance on future delivery and
the possible expansion of the strand. The study will be
published in September 2008.
The Reflective Study can be downloaded as a
pdf file below.
 The
Reflective Study
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