Leading care home resource carehome.co.uk joins forces with Research Ready Care Home Network

The leading care home resource carehome.co.uk has joined forces with the Research Ready Care Home Network in an innovative project to encourage more care homes to take part in research studies to improve the treatment and care of people with dementia.

Two-thirds of residents in care homes in Britain have some form of dementia and more research is needed to improve their treatment and care.

This is why carehome.co.uk has become a partner of the Research Ready Care Home Network, which is run by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Dementia & Neurodegenerative Diseases Research Network (DeNDRoN).

The Network is part of the Enabling Research in Care Homes (ENRICH) initiative, a hub for care home related research. It was launched earlier this year to increase participation in clinical research to 10 per cent of all NHS patients, as part of the Prime Minister’s Challenge on Dementia.

Davina Ludlow, director of carehome.co.uk, said: “We are delighted to provide our support to this initiative. Carehome.co.uk is the UK’s number one rated care home website in Google with over 1m visitors per month.

“This puts us in a great position to be able to help DeNDRoN deliver on the Prime Minister's Challenge on Dementia and promote the Research Ready Care Home Network to our visitors– we feel strongly that supporting further research will bring wider benefits to the whole sector, in particular residents living in care homes.”

www.carehome.co.uk is the leading online directory of UK care homes and related services. It receives over 14m visitors per year and is a primary source of information for anyone wanting to understand more about residential care.

Adam Smith, DeNDRoN programme manager said: “We are delighted to welcome carehome.co.uk as our latest partner. There are over 17,500 care homes in England, and around 260,000 people with dementia live in those homes. We want to ensure that all those residents have an equal opportunity to participate in new studies, and we want to ensure that all those care homes are aware of the benefits of involvement.

“This exciting collaboration with carehome.co.uk will enable information on the new network, and the benefits of membership to be communicated to all care homes across the UK – encouraging them to support the research being delivered as part of the Prime Minister’s Challenge on Dementia.”

Steve Iliffe, professor of Primary Care for Older People at University College London believes the network is the “missing link between the research community and the care home sector”.

BUPA Care Homes and Barchester Healthcare have already signed up to the initiative and the Network hopes to recruit hundreds more care homes in the coming months.

To get involved in research or be a part of the network of ‘research ready’ care homes visit www.dendron.nihr.ac.uk/enrich or email enrich@dendron.org.uk

For more information on the partnership contact Ellie Neville, carehome.co.uk media and marketing manager ellie.neville@tomorrows.co.uk