I have joined the Centre for Health Services Studies at the University of Kent as a Research Assistant in 2017 and have since progressed to a Research Fellow; I am also a Post-Doctoral Dementia Research Fellow with the Applied Research Collaboration – Kent, Surrey and Sussex. I have a PhD in Social Policy, an MSc in Social and Applied Psychology, BSc degree in Applied Psychology with Clinical Psychology and a Postgraduate Certificate in Methods of Social Research; all at the University of Kent. I have 14 years of experience as a care home-based dementia care worker and have previously worked as an Assistant Psychologist for Older Adult Psychological Services (NHS).
The aim of my SSCR Individual Research Career Development Award was to build expertise in research priority setting specifically with people living with dementia. This included training in dementia-inclusive approaches, piloting these locally, and using the resulting priorities to inform a grant application — which was successful, underlining the value of PPIE at the ideas stage of the research cycle.
Initially, I struggled to find a suitable methodological approach. Fortunately, the flexibility of the award allowed me to adapt the project. I invited a co-researcher living with dementia to share decision-making and we formed a small working group of people with lived experience to co-develop a method that worked for them.
We tested this new approach with a wider group of people living with dementia in Kent, then reconvened as a working group to create an accessible summary of the priority areas and specific research questions that emerged.
Rasa’s research interests include:
Arts for dementia
Dementia care and policy
Adult social care
Palliative/end-of-life care
