Dementia consultancy

Areas of expertise 

Our areas of expertise include:

• Creating enabling environments
• Peri-diagnostic and post-diagnostic interventions
• Dementia friendly communities and businesses
• Skilled care and leadership for complex care services
• Creativity and the arts
• Quality improvement programmes including tools for practice
• Person-centred dementia care at home, in supported housing, hospitals and care homes
• Activity, sport and nature
• Information, communication and assistive technologies

What do we offer?

Whether you are trying to improve your physical surroundings or how you deliver care or support for people with dementia, we are able to help you. For example, we can help you select and use the myriad of tools available to evaluate whether you are providing a person-centred service.

Below are a few examples to help you think about the type of project that you could undertake with our help.

• Are you new to the Care Fit for VIPS toolkit? – We can teach you how to use it, walk you through your first self-assessment and help you decide your priorities for change.
• Do you need to evaluate the impact of training? – We can visit a sample of your care homes and make an assessment of practice and impact.
• Are you looking to improve your premises? – We can carry out site visits to provide advice on particular schemes.
• Are you planning a new build? – We will provide tailored consultancy support throughout the lifetime of a project from initiation to post occupancy evaluation focussing on the built environment.
• Do you have a product which you think will be beneficial to people living with dementia? – We can evaluate whether it is effective and provide a report for you.

Enabling Environments Programme

Through its work with over 250 care organisations, The King’s Fund’s Enhancing the Healing Environment (EHE) Programme  created a solid body of evidence to support the design of environments which promote well-being. The dementia-friendly design component of the programme transferred to the Association for Dementia Studies, and integrating this knowledge into our education, research and knowledge transfer activities enables ADS to help people with dementia to live well and to be well supported.

Building on this award-winning and cutting edge work, ADS is able to offer a range of education programmes and workshops as well as bespoke consultancy for organisations and individuals who wish to create enabling and supportive environments for people living with dementia. We are also able to offer free access to the EHE dementia-friendly environmental assessment tools for wards, hospitals, care homes, health centres and housing.

Our approach involves key principles of co-design and co-production, with the needs of people affected by dementia paramount in all our work. Evidence suggests that this not only results in better design, encouraging staff to ‘own’ and be proud of the physical environment in which they work, but also delivers innovative, sustainable, fit-for-purpose, cost-effective design.

ADS can offer:

• Day events focused on the principles of creating enabling environments for members of multidisciplinary teams
• A bespoke range of educational events
• Tailored consultancy support and site visits
• Delivery on-site, online or at the University of Worcester

See leaflet

Dementia-friendly environmental assessment tools

There are six versions of the environmental assessment tools available according to which setting you would like to explore.  

• Care home assessment tool
• Gardens assessment tool
• Health centre assessment tool
• Hospital assessment tool
• Housing assessment tool
• Ward assessment tool

Download a copy of any/all of the tools

We have developed a new booklet to make your garden dementia friendly. This is formatted as a booklet, so please choose this option if you print a copy. You may also find this 'My home, my garden story' a useful resource.

You can access the Alzheimer's Society website to find out more information on how to make your home dementia friendly. 

To view the EHE project directory of completed schemes please visit here.

If you would like help using the assessment tools or would like ADS to complete an assessment with you and provide advice on what changes to prioritise, or wish to discuss the development of a bespoke environmental assessment tool, please contact us to find out more about the services we can offer.

For further information

Please email us at dementia@worc.ac.uk if you are interested in receiving further information about our education programmes and workshops or if you are interested in collaborating to explore enabling environments for people with dementia.