Durham University

Graduate Student, Applied Social Sciences

PhD student

Ustinov

Thesis Title: Using evaluation to uncover ways to compose, substantiate, and make real; knowledge about people with dementia.

About

Ethna qualified as a Registered Nurse (LD) in March 1995. In those heady days when there were lots of jobs around for newly qualified nurses, she decided to work in Hartlepool as an Assistant Home Manager in a community nursing home. Although the staff were exceptionally devoted to people living in the home, through no fault of theirs, the service was not a good one. So, Ethna worked with the local Community Learning Disability Team in Hartlepool to improve the service and begin the process of re-provisioning, so that residents could live closer to their families and friends. From here Ethna moved to Northallerton where she worked as Home Manager in a community home supporting adults with a dual diagnosis of learning disabilities and mental health problems. Ethna’s next position was working as a Development Officer in Teesside on a resettlement project. Although, the word ‘resettlement’ might jar people’s sensitivities, the project was really about bringing people with learning disabilities and complex needs back home, so that they could live closer to their family and friends.

After approximately three years, Iceland (the country, not the shop) beckoned and Ethna moved there with her lovely husband – well she could hardly leave him home alone in England – and their two children and a BSc in Nursing. Iceland was wonderful. Five volcanoes, one of which erupted about eight weeks after they arrived, ringed the family home. One of the volcanoes – Eyjafjallajokull, has since become quite famous for disrupting the travel plans of the entire world. Something Icelanders were so proud off they coined the now famous (well, in Iceland anyway) joke, ‘Mr Brown, we don’t have much cash, but we have lots of ash’. Ethna can proudly boast she knew the volcano when nobody knew how to pronounce Eyjafjallajokull.

After the volcano, and inbetween supporting nursing home staff, residents and guests during the biggest earthquake to hit Iceland in recent history – a respectable 6.7 on the Richter scale, Ethna also found gainful employment as a learning disability therapist in a primary school and as the Head of Special Education in a pre-school.

In 2005, the family headed back to England where, after a brief sojourn in Australia to work on her MSc in Nursing, Ethna took up employment with Durham University as a Research Associate. During this time, Ethna nurtured the irrational dream of completing a doctorate and to this end developed a research proposal, which looked at evaluating a dementia service. She was interested in understanding how the new Dementia Strategy was affecting local service provision and what people affected by dementia thought about their dementia service. One MA in Social Research Methods later and that dream came to pass. The research is now at the data collection phase. See below for more details.

Current PhD research
Title: Using evaluation to uncover ways to compose, substantiate, and make real; knowledge about people with dementia.

The purpose of my PhD research is to evaluate the impact of a range of memory services for people with dementia provided by an integrated Community Mental Health Team for Older People team (CMHT) within an NHS Trust. In line with recommendations listed within the new Dementia Strategy, the Trust is in the process of re-providing services for older people with dementia. Given the importance of beginning programme evaluation at the inception of a new service, this study offers a rare and exciting opportunity to capture the work of the CMHT as it is changing and to explore what it means to the many people involved in and affected by its transformation.

Data collection tools for the study include in-depth interviews with older people with dementia, their families and caregivers and staff from the CMHT, participant observation of team meetings, analysis of key documents, the use of Talking Mats(TM) during in-depth interviews, research diaries (research journal entries for advisory group members and daily activity diaries for interviewees) and a comprehensive literature review. Older people with dementia will be invited to become members of an advisory group who will play an important role in the on-going development and management of the study. Advisory group members will host a series of seminars so that they can share their research experiences, develop new skills and gather ideas on the best way to take particular issues forward. Data will be analysed narratively and thematically.


Ethna Parker RN(LD), Dip N, BSc (HONS), MSc, MA

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