Resources

DesHCA is committed to creating evidence-based resources that are well researched and targeted to the people who need them.

All of the resources you find below were developed by the DesHCA team over the course of the project. You can see all of our resources by default, or use the filter options below to view resources aimed at a particular group.

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DesHCA's 'Hints and Tips' Booklet

Created alongside to align with the Dementia Services Development Centre’s , this booklet represents an easy to read introduction for anyone interested in creating a more age-inclusive home.

Whether you’re someone who’s always on the lookout for a lifehack, a professional looking for a sharable resource, or simply keen to learn about how you can apply the principles of age-inclusive, dementia friendly design to your home, this resource is for you.

DeHCA's Age Inclusive Home Checklist

Designed to sit alongside DesHCA’s Hints and Tips booklet, this checklist makes it easier to identify opportunities for creating a more age-inclusive home.

DesHCA's Economic Evaluation Framework

Developed by this resource is designed as a guide to help those who are interested in thinking through the various costs and benefits of adaptation.

Primarily intended as a resource for professionals, the guide provides a framework people can use to think about who might benefit from adaptations, either directly or indirectly, while also thinking critically about the different costs involved in finding, installing, and maintaining adaptations.

Literature Review: Housing Design Evaluation for People Living with Cognitive Change

This paper reports the results of the literature review the team conducted as part of initial work in 2021. It has been published as an open access paper, and is free to read.

The abstract reads: Research suggests that improvements to home design may enable us to live better with cognitive change as we age. However, few innovations have been fully evaluated. The paper systematically reviews 47 items of evaluative literature. Research design and quality are varied. Qualitative analysis of literature demonstrates the need for a holistic approach that includes older people’s diverse perspectives, examples of promising practice that responds to individual needs, and gaps in research on scalability and economic viability of innovations. The context of design improvements is found to be critical.

Insight from Statistics: Reports of Adaptation in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing

Home adaptations can support people to live longer in their own home. In this short report we describe how we used data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) to examine the types of adaptations people have reported installing, what insights we’ve gained from catagorising adaptations as “passive, property based”, “active, movement based” or “bathroom specific”, and what this analysis teaches us about the adaptations people choose to install in their home.

Insight from Statistics: Measuring Cognitive Impairment in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing

In this short report Dr Lisa Davison and Professor Alasdair Rutherford provide insight into how ELSA, the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing measures cognitive impairment and what this data tells us about the health and living situations of people living with cognitive impairment in England.

Insight from Statistics: The Relationship Between Installing Home Adaptations and Living with Cognitive Impairment

Are older people with cognitive impairments more likely to have home adaptations installed than those without? In this short report Dr Lisa Davison and Professor Alasdair Rutherford report findings from their analysis of ELSA, the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, and highlight key concerns around low rates of adaptations intended to support cognitive impariment.

DesHCA Project Overview Poster

A short poster giving a brief overview of the DesHCA project and its outcomes, first presented at the Birmingham Care Show, 2023.

Barriers to an Age Friendly Future Poster

A short poster outlining some of DesHCA’s key findings. This poster focuses on the barriers identified during the project, and the challenges we need to overcome to create a more age inclusive future. First presented at the Birmingham Care Show 2023.

Environmental Quality in the Homes of Older People in Scotland

A poster based on the environmental sensing activity carried out by the team as part of Work Package 2. The poster reports early data and highlights the potential link between home quality and health outcomes for older people. First presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference, 2023.

Impact of Cognitive Impairment on Home Adaptation Poster

Sitting alongside our Insight from Statistics resource, this poster gives on overview of our analysis using the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, which explored the link between living with a cognitive impairment and living in an adapted or age inclusive home. This poster was first presented at the Scottish Dementia Research Consortium conference in 2022.

Impact of Improved Home Design for People Living with Cognitive Change Poster

This poster provides an overview of some of DesHCA’s key findings, highlighting the small changes people can make to their homes to make them more supporting and accessible for people living with cognitive impairment. This poster was first presented at the Scottish Dementia Research Consortium conference in 2023.

Paper: Othering Older People’s Housing- Gaming Ageing to Support Future-Planning

This paper reports some of DesHCA’s findings around the Our House serious game. It has been published as an open access paper and is free to read.

The abstract reads:

The ‘othering’ of ageing is linked to an integrated process of ageism and hinders planning for the future for both individuals and practitioners delivering housing and health services. This paper aims to explore how creative interventions can help personalise, exchange knowledge and lead to system changes that tackle the ‘othering’ of ageing. The Designing Homes for Healthy Cognitive Ageing (DesHCA) project offers new and creative insights through an innovative methodology utilising ‘serious games’ with a co-produced tool called ‘Our House’ that provides insights into how to deliver housing for older people for ageing well in place. In a series of playtests with over 128 people throughout the UK, the findings show that serious games allow interaction, integration and understanding of how ageing affects people professionally and personally. The empirical evidence highlights that the game mechanisms allowed for a more in-depth and nuanced consideration of ageing in a safe and creative environment. These interactions and discussions enable individuals to personalise and project insights to combat the ‘othering’ of ageing. However, the solutions are restrained as overcoming the consequences of ageism is a societal challenge with multilayered solutions. The paper concludes that serious gaming encourages people to think differently about the concept of healthy ageing—both physically and cognitively—with the consideration of scalable and creative solutions to prepare for ageing in place.

Paper: Outcomes of home design to support healthy cognitive ageing: modified e-Delphi exercise with older people and housing-related professionals

This paper reports some of DesHCA’s findings from our e-Delphi exercise. It has been published as an open access paper and is free to read.

The abstract reads:

There is emerging agreement that living in a home designed to support healthy cognitive ageing canenable people to live better with dementia and cognitive change. However, existing literature has used a variety ofoutcome measures that have infrequently been informed by the perspectives of older people or of professional indesign and supply of housing. The DesHCA (Designing Homes for Healthy Cognitive Ageing) study aimed to identifyoutcomes that were meaningful for these groups and to understand their content and meanings.

A presurvey of older people and housing professionals (n = 62) identified potential outcomes. These werethen used in three rounds of a modified e-Delphi exercise with a panel of older people and housing professionals(n = 74) to test meanings and identify areas of agreement and disagreement. Descriptive statistics were used topresent findings from previous rounds.

The survey confirmed a wide range of possible outcomes considered important. Through the e-Delphirounds, panellists prioritised outcomes relating to living at home that could be influenced by design, and clarifiedtheir understanding of the meanings of outcomes. In subsequent rounds, they commented on earlier results. The exercise enabled five key outcome areas to be identified – staying independent, feeling safe, living in an adaptablehome, enabling physical activity and enabling enjoyed activities- which were then tested for their content andapplicability in panellists’ views.

The five key outcome areas appeared meaningful to panellists, whilst also demonstrating nuancedmeanings. They indicate useful outcomes for future research, though will require careful definition in each case tobecome measures. Importantly, they are informed by the views of those most immediately affected by better orpoorer home design.

Book Chapter: The use of virtual reality to support participatory design processes in environmental design for cognitive change

This chapter is part of an open-access book and is available for free. It explains how DesHCA built upon existing work from the Dementia Services Development Centre, utilising virtual reality technology, allowing both older people and professionals to participate in the home design process.

The abstract reads:

The capability of virtual reality (VR), to enable full-scale immersive experiences of architectural designs provides the potential to use VR as a co-design tool amongst underrepresented groups, such as those experiencing cognitive decline. This chapter discusses two sequential VR-supported co-design research projects which included older people living with cognitive change. It evidences the potential role of VR as an effective means of achieving equity and inclusion in the design process, achieved through removal of historic barriers to design participation. It concludes with a vision for an achievable future, where VR-supported democratisation of the design process leads to improvements in environmental design, and subsequent improvements in quality of life for people living with cognitive change.