A collaborative exploration of family-centred reminiscence within visits of care home residents with dementia

Background: For families of residents living in care homes, maintaining familial connections isparamount. This study focused on developing an understanding of family-centredreminiscence practices during care home visits, with the broader aim of supportingrelationship-centred care and improving the overall experience of residents and their families.Methods: This was a collaborative action research study which aimed to generate a sharedunderstanding of the benefits and practical application of family-centred reminiscence, andto co-create a resource to support family members to use structured reminiscence duringvisits with their relatives living with dementia in nursing homes. Cycle One comprised ofindividual interviews and a group session where we discussed how families might introducereminiscence into their visits. Cycle Two included three group workshops involving a Time-Machine activity, and two rounds of Emotional Touchpoints group interviews, interspersedwith reminiscence-in-action with follow-up phone interviews. Cycle Three involved two focusgroup sessions to develop a co-produced practical guide, and a round of closing telephoneinterviews to assess the participants’ experiences of the wider study. Data was analysed usingreflexive thematic analysis. This study incorporated aspects of carer education relating toreminiscence and dementia friendly communication to allow families to adapt this into theirvisits, which was also included in our practical guide.Findings: A family-centred approach to reminiscence was collaboratively developed and usedby six family members, and founded on the experiences of participants, a practical guide wasco-produced by the group. Relationship-centred care and the Six Senses Framework informedour approach which placed the family and familial relationships at the fore. An unexpectedfinding from this study was that families wanted more peer support to be available throughouttheir visiting journey.Conclusions: The study has fulfilled the aim, whereby we have produced evidence on thebenefits and practical application of a novel family-centred approach to reminiscence whichfacilitated connections between visiting family members and people living with dementia incare homes.