Training for Health and Care Professionals 2025 – 9 weeks from Thursday 16th January – 10AM Online via Zoom

Health and Care Professionals

If you regularly encounter people with dementia in your role, or if you supervise, mentor or manage others who do, at any level in any health, care or social setting, this course is for you. You don’t need any training beforehand to understand this course, but whatever courses you may have done in the past, you will learn something new.

Our course for professionals consists of 9 weekly interactive online sessions for up to 1o trainees. Each session includes a short presentation using anonymised real-life examples, with time for questions and discussion. During the course you will gain a better understanding of how dementia affects the person, and develop skills to:

• lessen the impact of dementia on the individual and their family
• de-escalate distressed behaviour
• avoid inadvertently triggering distress.

Week-by-week guide to what’s covered:

1. Introduction to Understanding Dementia
– what’s different about this approach, and how it can lessen the impact of dementia
2. Types of dementia and related conditions
– how to tailor the approach to different situations
3. Well-being in dementia
– its importance, its vulnerability in dementia, and how to support it
4. Questions
– why they can be unhelpful in dementia, and how to find better ways to support choice
5. Being a buddy
– how to get alongside the people you care for, and build better relationships
6. Contradiction and confrontation
– why we should avoid them, and how to do that without getting tangled up in lies
7. Listening and talking skills
– what to listen out for, what we can learn, and how to deal with repetitive questions
8. The hazards of ‘parenting’ our elders
– why role reversal can cause problems, and how to address ‘difficult’ behaviour
9. Counterintuitive strategies for managing risk, professional boundaries etc
– how to use this approach to make difficult situations easier to manage

Priced at £195 per person, our training for professionals is very cost-effective. A hard copy of the booklet ‘Understanding Dementia and Lessening its Impact’ is included, with electronic handouts and CPD certificate on completion. After the course, we will invite you to join our online community of professionals using this approach, for ongoing discussion and support.

When a whole team is trained in this approach, clients experience more seamless and unobtrusive care. We can deliver bespoke courses, so contact us to discuss your requirements.

If your preferred session is fully booked, you can join our waiting list by emailing Lucy White at training@understandingdementia.co.uk

*Courses run for 9 weeks