Empowering a Meaningful Life for All Dementia Network Plus (EMPOWER)

To meet growing need now and in the future for high-quality dementia care for all, we must address inequalities in health and social care for people needing support with care and their families (including close friends). People with dementia want to live a meaningful life as far as possible; engaging in personally valued, purposeful activities that support connectedness to self, others and the environment.

Some groups remain underserved. People from ethnically diverse groups, in poorer areas, rural areas, with multiple conditions and severe dementia too often struggle to access the appropriate care needed. This causes considerable distress to them and their families, and their quality of life. What we will achieve:

The EMPOWER Dementia Network creates an innovative and much needed collaboration between dementia care, social care, primary care and palliative care, with community partners and people with lived experience. Together we identify priority areas for change, develop inclusive research practices, and build research capacity in co-production and community approaches.

Working with policy makers, practitioners, and the public we will identify and construct system-based solutions to lever a step-change in societal attitudes on living and dying with dementia, and in health and social care policies to address inequalities in high-quality care for people with dementia and complex needs.

Our aim:

Working in partnership, we will co-create a network for excellence to support and EMPOWER equalities for people needing support with care, and their families. The Network will pioneer novel evidence-based community and co-production approaches to lever change in dementia care, focussing on people with complex needs from marginalised, vulnerable, and underserved groups.

We will advance research methods to ensure meaningful engagement for people with dementia, for their voice to be heard to shape research priorities and generate understanding and thinking on the solutions to provide high-quality health and social care for all needing greater support. Intended benefits:

The EMPOWER Dementia Network focuses on 'mind and body' research putting the person before the disease to address inequalities in dementia care for people with complex needs, and their families. We use co-production as the guiding approach to work together, for community partners and people with lived experience to drive the Network priorities and innovations in inclusive research approaches. We achieve this by:

Creating a shared platform to connect dementia communities, people with lived experience, practitioners, policy makers and researchers to work together to bring their ideas to life and lever change for equality in dementia care to maintain and promote quality of life for people with dementia, and their families.

Identifying and implementing approaches to build trusting partnerships, focusing on outreach and engagement with groups underrepresented in dementia research that seek to benefit, particularly people underserved from ethnically diverse groups, socio-economic disadvantage, with multiple conditions and severe dementia.

Promoting equality of opportunity for inclusion in research by innovating inclusive research approaches to diversify involvement and participation in research, particularly for people with increasingly complex needs and severe dementia, too often unrepresented in health and social care research.

Constructing and pursuing the best system-based solutions for high-quality dementia care in collaborative small projects connecting community partners, people with lived experiences and researchers to tackle inequalities in care through understanding experiences, identifying solutions and engaging policy makers and the public to lever and sustain change.