Are you interested in improving how care is organised and delivered in care homes?

Have you, or a relative or friend, lived in a care home? Have you worked in the care home sector, or in social care, or clinically with care home residents? Could you help us to improve the research that we are doing in care homes?

 Become a patient and public involvement representative

 We would like to invite you to join our Care Home Interest Group (CHIG).

You do not need to have any specific skills to join our group – we are keen to work with people who have experience or interest in care homes, and who are able to explain what that is like and contribute to our group discussions to help make our research better.

 What will the Care Home Interest Group do?

The group will help our research staff to think about studies from a patient/public point of view and to make sure that people have access to good quality research information. They do this by helping us to:

• make sure our research is relevant and useful

• increase knowledge and understanding of care home research

• find ways of telling people about research news

• improve patient and carer experiences (including study participants)

 Who are we looking for?

We would like to invite people with experience of or an interest in care homes and/or care home research to help us. We would ask you to do some of the following:

• Attend two meetings per year, with other VOICENorth members, research staff and health professionals.

• Give us your advice and tell us your ideas about our research plans

• Talk to people about our research and results (in line with confidentiality)

• Some members may wish to read and comment on our grant applications, or review and comment on documents and activities linked to our research (e.g. leaflets or web pages). This will not be everyone’s cup of tea, and we are also happy to welcome members who prefer to share their views in meetings.

 We will reimburse all expenses that you have to help us with this work, including travel expenses.

If you are interested in this role then please contact Dr Rachel Stocker: rachel.stocker@newcastle.ac.uk or 0191 2082057 for further information and to request an application form.