Care Home Activity Providers facilitating Public Involvement in research as meaningful activity for care home residents (CHAPPI)

We want to understand how care home activity providers and researchers could work with care home residents to enable them to become involved in research as members of the public and have their voices heard. Background People with "lived experience" can influence research, making it more meaningful and relevant. Public involvement in care home research has typically included older people living in the community or family carers, but residents themselves are rarely involved. COVID-19 stopped our planned public involvement in care homes, as researchers could no longer visit. Perhaps care home activity providers could arrange research public involvement as an activity, as they were part of the staff? We worked with the National Activity Provider Association to try this. Activity providers ran public involvement activities about our research with their residents. Activity providers fed back to the research team, and resident insights informed our research. We now want to learn more about this method of public involvement. Methods To research public involvement, genuine involvement opportunities are needed for residents. This project will use three studies we are involved in. Our research will observe and ask people (in interviews) about the public involvement to understand if the involvement is possible, enjoyable and influences the research activity and findings. Different activities will be used by activity providers to enable care home residents to be understood and give their views on the research, depending on resident preference and cognitive ability. Activities will use written words, pictures, videos and games that will explain the studies to care home residents, and help them to use their experience to influence the research (e.g. which questions are important, how to recruit residents). We will explore the process of setting up the public involvement activities, including resources needed and costs. We will observe the public involvement process. We will interview care home activity providers, residents, relatives, care home staff and researchers, asking their experiences and views about the public involvement process. Public involvement The project is based on ideas suggested by a family carer and a care home manager, responding to restrictions on visiting care homes during COVID-19. Our Public Involvement group (including care home residents), will be offered choice in how they want to be involved, including decision making, developing study materials, providing perspectives on findings, and planning dissemination activities. All Public Involvement members will be offered payment according to NIHR guidance and will receive feedback on their input. Dissemination Our findings will inform co-produced How to guidance about activity providers facilitating resident involvement, to be shared widely and used by activity providers and researchers. The research will engage residents in meaningful activity, reducing social isolation, and support professional development of activity providers.