Communities of Practice
The Communities of Practice or Communities of Interest (?) listed below are currently active or in development:
Design and Dementia
Approaching holistic design concerns through interdisciplinary/intersectoral discourse and tool development to enhance social and physical environments | Resources |
First Link®
Provides an opportunity for First Link Coordinators across the province to connect, share best practices and create frameworks to enhance practice and reach in their community. This group uses a peer support approach to ensure they have the tools and resources needed | Resources |
Knowledge Translation
Team of Knowledge Brokers in the fields of senior?s health, dementia care, policy and research who work to reduce duplication and build capacity in the realms of knowledge exchange and transfer. |
Mental Health, Addictions and Behavioural Issues
A collaboration between AKE, Seniors Health Knowledge Network ( formally SHRTN) and Ontario Research Coalition of Research Institutes / Centres on Health & Aging (ORC) to bring together people, ideas, and resources to increase awareness of the needs of seniors affected by serious mental illness, addiction, dementia or behavioural issues | Resources |
Volunteer Mobilization Initiative
Community action campaign which will expand the reach and impact of Alzheimer Society programs and services through volunteers. This grass roots, innovative volunteer initiative will provide Alzheimer Societies across Ontario with a variety of support materials that will enhance each Society?s volunteer program |
Behavioural Supports Ontario Communities of Practice
Behavioural Support Units Collaborative
The BSU Collaborative works to identify best practices in the design, development and delivery of behavioural support units geared to provide intensive supportive structures for persons with responsive behaviours for long-term care, acute care and the community. |
Enhanced Access and Flow (Formally Centralized Intake) Collaborative
The Enhanced Access and Flow Collaborative focuses on how to best define and deliver a service program that streamlines clients' access to supportive services for persons with dementia and their care partners. |
Mobile Teams Collaborative
The Mobile Team Collaborative informs innovative cross-disciplinarian and cross-sectoral practice models and frameworks to best meet the needs of persons with responsive behaviours by supporting professional through outreach. |
Primary Care
The Primary Care Collaborative brings together individuals across Ontario who are working to further integrate behavioural supports within the Primary Care sector. Primary Care is a key partner in supporting people living with complex health care needs who are experiencing or at risk of developing responsive behaviours. The collaborative will look at ways to support innovative approaches to assessing and managing the needs of patients with responsive behaviours within primary care. |
Communities of Interest
Health Care Consent and Advance Care Planning
Leverages existing knowledge to develop, promote, implement, and evaluation, consistent lawful and evidence-based approaches to health care consent and advance care planning | Resources
Psychogeriatric Resource Consultants (PRCs)
Providing PRCs with an opportunity to share experiences and knowledge gained, collectively address challenges and learn from success stories | Resources
Self-Management and Dementia
There is increasing effort to use self-management interventions and supports with individuals with chronic health conditions, but these interventions are rarely used with persons living with dementia because of stigma and misconceptions about the ability they have to play an active role in their own care. The Self-Management in Dementia COI brings together people with expertise in using self-management interventions, those with an interest in advancing the use of self-management interventions in the dementia context and persons with dementia. Together, they work to determine effective strategies for supporting persons with dementia (and their care partners) to engage in self-management activities so that they can positively impact their own care
If you are interested in any of these topic-specific CoPs, or are interested in developing another topic-specific CoP, please contact the Knowledge Broker.
- A Community of Practice (CoP) is a community or group of people who have made a commitment to be available to each other, offer support to share learning, and to consciously develop new knowledge (Wheatley, 2007). A CoP makes the intentional commitment to advance the field of practice and to share those discoveries with anyone engaged in similar work (Wheatley, 2007)
- A Community of Interest (COI) is a group of people who share a common interest and utilize the resource centre, knowledge broker services etc. to connect and share with others on a specific topic.