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MEMBER SPOTLIGHT Nightingale Hammerson In each issue of Savings, Solutions, and Sustainability, we will hear directly from providers about solutions that have worked for them. Whether it’s a new tech solution, a workforce management tool or partnerships to strengthen operations, this feature will showcase solutions and encourage providers to think differently and try new practices. In this feature, we hear from Nuno Santos Lopes, Director of Research, Innovation and Community Engagement at Nightingale Hammerson, on the impact of research in care homes.
Nightingale Hammerson comprises two care homes: Nightingale House in Balham and Hammerson House in East Finchley. Nightingale Hammerson is an independent charity that has been serving older members of the Jewish community for over 180 years. Its homes offer individually tailored, compassionate care for residential, nursing, dementia, respite and palliative care.
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At Nightingale Hammerson, we have worked with multiple researchers over the past few years. Researchers are our ‘critical friends’. They see what we do and how we do it, and ask us why we do what we do. Working with researchers offers us a great opportunity to reflect on our day-to-day practice and challenge ourselves to always strive to improve and provide better care to our community. Over the past year, we have engaged with 14 different studies and researchers on topics like palliative care, human rights, respiratory infections, COVID-19 response, dementia, oral care and others. Care homes are a gold mine for researchers. A great variety of topics require research and the social care sector needs researchers to invest more time within the sector to help us challenge the status quo and shape Government policy to provide the right level of support to our communities in the coming decades. Care England
Planting the seed Traditionally, researchers approach care providers with the topics they are interested in, which on occasion are not the priority for the care providers. That does not help with engagement with care homes. We want to change the way research happens in the care sector. For this reason, we convene our Care Home Research Forums. The third forum took place on 29th November at Hammerson House (for further details visit https:// nightingalehammerson.org/events/ chrf2023/). At this event, we invited researchers to share the findings of their studies with an audience of researchers, care home staff, CQC inspectors, local authorities, care home residents and their relatives. With such a broad group of attendees, each presentation generated interesting and insightful discussions. This event is the seed that Nightingale Hammerson has planted to help bring about change to social care research.
necessary one-to-one therapies for the residents in need. This means that, when residents require support, they can have daily physiotherapy and/or occupational therapy that will improve their quality of life and reduce health risks associated with contractures. This new model improved the healthcare outcomes for the residents and created a new form of income that helps to fund charitable therapies for the residents who are unable to pay.
A host of benefits As a result of COVID-19, the Government is investing record funds into research in social care through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHCR). While, in the past, providers would not be keen to engage with researchers as they would have to assume the costs of releasing team members to support the researchers, now the costs of running research in care homes can be fully funded by the research team and providers can even have a surplus. However, not all the benefits are financial only. We have learned over time that linking researchers with key team members in care homes improves their motivation, making them feel valued, and this leads to an improvement in their retention and career development. For the residents and relatives, this can also be a platform to feel they have a say in reviewing how the services are run and to have a voice in how the sector is researched. Research studies helped to shape the work we do, for example, the outcomes of a research study about contractures in older people and its consequences on the residents’ quality of life. Since then, we reshaped the way we deliver therapies in our homes and we introduced a mixedfunding model for the provision of the Care England
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→ A sustainable future We now have a unique opportunity to embrace research in our sector and open our doors to universities to show them how fantastic we are. We are experts in care and we need researchers to demonstrate to the Government the impact we have had on people's lives. We need to show how much we are helping to sustain a healthier, safer Britain, including the NHS. Some of the areas that need further research include: • How the patchy GP provision to care providers across the countries changes the outcomes for residents (for example, the number of hospital admissions, place of death and falls that lead to fractures). • What the correlation is between Local Authority/Continuing Healthcare funding and the healthcare outcomes for the older population in that area. • What the impact is of the lack of dental care provision for people living in care homes. • What the correlation is between the free or non-free incontinence pad provision in nursing homes with the hospital admissions for people with urinary tract infections.
These are just some of the questions the social care sector and its service users are facing. We need to bring the researchers on board to help us progress in the next five to 10 years. This is not a quick fix but, with an evidence-based approach, we will be able to work alongside the Government and the NHS to get our sector into the right shape and offer ‘Outstanding’ care to our most vulnerable population.
Time to participate To help shape the future of social care, get involved by contacting the NIHR within your area. You can also check the studies that are going on with your local universities, discuss the funding available to participate in the studies and involve your teams. It is now or never! Our sector won’t have many more opportunities than it currently has. You will enjoy the journey and care home residents, relatives and team members will benefit. Plus, you will be getting extra marks towards an ‘Outstanding’ CQC inspection.
Nuno Santos Lopes, Director of Research, Innovation and Community Engagement at Nightingale Hammerson. Email: nlopes@nightingalehammerson.org @NGHHammerson
Care England
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