Empowering Residents to Shape the Places They Call Home: A Co-Design Research Project

OARC undertook a two-year research project to develop a practical, evidence-informed resource supporting meaningful resident engagement in home operations and decision-making. Grounded in the lived realities of long-term care, the work was shaped by a research team that included Resident Leaders, as well as sector and academic partners.

Our project involved three progressive phases:

1.  A scoping review of existing academic literature to learn how residents have been engaged in home-level decisions.
2. Interviews and focus groups with residents and team members in Ontario long-term care homes to identify the current facilitators and barriers to resident engagement in home-level decisions.
3. Co-design and development of a toolkit for long-term care homes to facilitate resident involvement in their home operations and decision-making. The published toolkit was made available here: Resident Engagement Toolkit | OARC - Ontario Association of Residents' Councils

This project was made possible by two successful grant applications: the Springboard grant program by the Canadian Frailty Network joint with Perley Health and a Patient-Oriented Research grant provided by the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR).

Published Papers:

October 2025 (Scoping Review) – Hutchinson M, Gilhuly J, Ramsden G, et al. Listened to but Rarely Heard: A Scoping Review of Resident Engagement in the Organizational Design and Governance of their Long-Term Care Homes. Canadian Journal on Aging / La Revue canadienne du vieillissement. 2025;44(4):552-564. doi:10.1017/S0714980825100263

February 2024 (Protocol Paper) –Lee C, Tripp D, McVie M, et al. Empowering Ontario’s long-term care residents to shape the place they call home: a codesign protocol.BMJ Open. 2024;14:e077791. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2023-077791

Presentations:

February 2026 – Applying Tools for Transformation: OARC’s Resident Engagement Toolkit. Ontario CLRI. Applying Tools for Transformation: OARC's Resident Engagement Toolkit

February 2026 – Everything About Residents Involves Residents: A Co-Designed Toolkit. Ontario Association of Residents' Councils. Everything About Residents Involves Residents: A Co-Designed Toolkit

January 2025 – Collaborating for Change: A Co-Design Approach to Resident Engagement in Long-Term Care Homes. [Organization not specified]. Collaborating for Change: A Co-Design Approach to Resident Engagement in Long-Term Care Homes

November 2024 – Ask a Resident First – Resident Engagement in Research. Ontario Association of Residents' Councils. Ask a Resident First – Resident Engagement in Research

November 2024 – Nothing about residents without residents. Advancing Workforce Analysis and Research for Dementia (AWARD Network). Highlights from Phase 1 and 2 of the Research Project

March 2024 – Residents of Long-Term Care Homes Shaping the Place They Call Home. brainXchange, in partnership with the Alzheimer Society of Canada and the Canadian Consortium of Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA). Access recording

For more information about OARC’s research, please contact Chloe Yeung, Evaluation and Quality Manager at: cyeung@ontarc.com

This research was supported by a Springboard Grants Program: Early Career Researcher Grant from the Canadian Frailty Network and Perley Health (Principal Investigator: Jennifer Bethell) and a Patient-Oriented Research Training Grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (Principal Investigators: Ontario Association of Residents' Councils; Devora Greenspon; Melissa McVie; Dee Tripp; Jennifer Bethell).