It cannot be assumed by healthcare providers that transgender people routinely receive care and treatment that is of the quality and sensitivity that should be expected. In particular there are concerns from within the transgender community that they experience discrimination and disrespect from both individual practitioners and the healthcare system as a whole. This causes an avoidance of contact that is undesirable for both users and providers of healthcare services. Older transgender people are vulnerable to a range of mental health problems and, like all elderly, increasingly to dementia; failure to access specialist services in a timely manner may result in unnecessary distress and potentially to crisis. This paper reports on the use of an appreciative inquiry approach towards identifying the opportunities for one health board in North Wales to work more closely with older members of the transgender community it serves.

Purpose This paper aims to understand the lived experience of a person living with dementia in a care home during the COVID-19 pandemic. It responds to the absence in research of the voices of people with dementia living in care homes during the pandemic. Design/methodology/approach The paper adopts a single case study design applied thematic analysis to semi-structured interview data to discover the experiences of one person living with dementia in a care home during a period of lockdown. Findings Five themes reveal how the participant responded to the practical and emotional challenges of the pandemic: autonomy; fears; keeping connected; keeping safe and other people living with dementia. These themes highlight the participant’s ability to adapt, accept and dispute lockdown restrictions, revealing considerable insight into their situation. Research limitations/implications The pandemic has restricted access to care homes, which informed the single case study design. This approach to the research may restrict the generalisability of the findings. Other researchers are encouraged to include the voices of people with dementia living in care homes in further studies. Practical implications Implications for practice, presented in this paper, promote quality psychosocial approaches when health-care workers engage with people living with dementia during periods of restricted activity. Originality/value Unlike other studies about the impact of the pandemic on care homes, this paper explores the experience of the pandemic in care homes from the perspective of a person living with dementia.

When people with dementia are admitted to hospital, both they and their carers and families have crucial roles to play. They should be positioned as the only true experts in the unique individuality of the person and brought into the nursing process as an equal partner in care. 'Care to Talk' is a conversational model developed through Appreciative Inquiry to facilitate this way of working. The model, its development and outcomes are discussed.

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Dementia Care Mapping™ is widely acknowledged as the gold standard observational method that can support the introduction of person centred care into a variety of settings (http://www.bradford.ac.uk/health/dementia/dementia-care-mapping/). It encourages care staff to think about how the person with dementia is experiencing the care provided and the care setting. It has been shown to raise care staff awareness sufficiently to bring about improvements in care. In this paper, we describe a programme of work in North Wales that seeks to find innovative ways to use Dementia Care Mapping™, in acute mental health admission wards for people affected by dementia, and we set out some of those innovations.