Dementia Support Line
Why dementia training for care workers matters and how to deliver it
Alzheimer’s Society’s latest report demonstrates the importance of high-quality, mandatory dementia training for the social care workforce
Published November 2024
What is the dementia training report about?
Our new report, ‘Because we’re human too: Why dementia training for care workers matters and how to deliver it’ demonstrates why high-quality mandatory dementia training for the social care workforce is imperative. It highlights the significant benefits that dementia training can bring to people’s lives, as well as to the wider health and care system.
Throughout the report, we draw on relevant expertise and experience, including insights from people living with dementia and their carers and leading academics in the field.
What does it focus on?
Many people living with dementia rely on social care, making up around 60% of people who draw on care at home in the UK and 70% of residents of older age residential care in England. Yet currently, no legal requirement exists for care staff to undertake dementia training in either England, Wales or Northern Ireland.
New Skills for Care data shows that only 29% of the care workforce in England have had any kind of dementia training. This impacts quality of care: the 2024 CQC State of Care report highlighted as one of its key areas of concern a lack of staff understanding of the specific needs of people with dementia.
We therefore call on national governments to ensure all care staff undertake dementia training. By drawing on two best practice training models, we show that high-quality training could be delivered nationally, at relatively low cost. We also make clear and achievable recommendations to local authorities and care providers on steps they can take now to improve quality and uptake of dementia training.
After reviewing available evidence, we also set out five key components for implementing impactful dementia training in care homes and across homecare agencies.
Key recommendations
National and local decision-makers, and care providers, must take urgent steps to improve dementia training, and help ensure that people living with dementia consistently receive the care they deserve.
- Governments in England, Wales and Northern Ireland should enact a statutory duty for all care providers registered with the relevant regulatory body in each nation (CQC in England, Social Care Inspectorate in Wales and Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority in Northern Ireland) to ensure their care staff undertake dementia training. Training content must be mapped to the relevant national framework in each nation (the Dementia Training Standards Framework in England, the Good Work Framework in Wales and the Dementia Learning and Development Framework in Northern Ireland).
- This should be underpinned by sufficient funding, following the precedent in England of the Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on learning disabilities and autism.
- When commissioning adult social care services, local authorities in England and Wales, and Health and Social Care Trusts in Northern Ireland, should include a contractual provision obliging care providers to ensure care staff undertake dementia training mapped to the relevant national framework in each nation.
- When sourcing and implementing training, local authorities in England and Wales, Health and Social Care Trusts in Northern Ireland, and care providers should ensure all five key components for impactful dementia training, set out in section seven of the report, are factored in. This is in addition to ensuring training content maps to the relevant national framework.
Download our report on dementia training
Read 'Because we're human too: Why dementia training for care workers matters, and how to deliver it' to find out more.