Dementia is already one of the biggest challenges facing health and social care. It is also one of the biggest opportunities for our sector to demonstrate its skill, professionalism and value. Today, around 982,000 people are living with dementia in the UK and that number is expected to rise to 1.4 million by 2040. As the prevalence of dementia continues to increase, care homes will play an increasingly important role in supporting people with more complex needs.
Families often manage for years before a care home becomes necessary. They adapt routines, take on more physical care, absorb the disruption to sleep and work and their own health, usually without any formal support. By the time someone is admitted to residential care, dementia has frequently progressed to a stage where behaviour is harder to predict, communication is more limited and the person arrives with a level of need that stretches even experienced staff.
Care home managers are, in effect, inheriting the most complex end of a long and often invisible caring journey. That has consequences for staffing, for risk and for how quickly a home can build trust with an anxious family. Care home managers and their teams are helping people navigate one of the most challenging transitions of their lives. This responsibility requires knowledge, confidence and specialist skills.
Dementia care is not a niche specialism anymore
The reality is that dementia is now a core part of care home provision. Best available modelling suggests that around 70% of residents in older age residential care settings in England are living with dementia, according to Alzheimer’s Society. Yet despite this, dementia training is not always consistently available across the workforce. Skills for Care’s most recent workforce data shows that only around a third of the adult social care workforce in England has had any dementia-specific training and there is still no legal requirement for care staff to undertake it in England, Wales or Northern Ireland.
Training should go beyond the basics
Good dementia training goes well beyond recognising symptoms. The training frameworks used across the UK, including England’s Dementia Training Standards Framework, consistently point to the same core areas: understanding how dementia affects communication and behaviour, recognising and managing distress without over-relying on medication, supporting people through transitions and changes in routine, and understanding the legal and ethical issues around consent, capacity and best interest decisions.
Equally important, and often left out of shorter courses, is training on how to talk to families. Many relatives arrive at the point of admission exhausted and guilty, even when they have done everything ‘right’. Staff who understand that dynamic handle those first conversations very differently to staff who do not. The best dementia training programmes involve a practical element so teams can develop communication skills to use in real-life scenarios.
The difference this makes is significant. We would expect staff who understand dementia to be better at de-escalating distress before issues arise. Training also supports staff to be better at reading non-verbal cues in residents who can no longer explain what is wrong, and more confident holding difficult conversations with families.
For managers, training should also support leadership capability. Creating a positive dementia culture does not happen by accident. It requires leaders who can role model best practice, support reflective learning and create environments where staff feel confident to ask questions and develop their skills. Importantly, dementia training should never be about ‘managing behaviour’. It should be about understanding people.
Supporting families is part of high-quality dementia care
One area that is sometimes overlooked in discussions about dementia training is the experience of families. At Dementia Carers Count, we support thousands of family carers every year. We know that reaching the point of residential care is rarely straightforward. Many families spend years providing 24/7 unpaid care before considering a care home placement. Our 2025 survey found that 72% of dementia carers often or very often feel unable to continue caring. 78% do not feel they get the support they need and four in five have reached crisis point because of their caring responsibilities.
For care home managers, understanding this context is critical. Strong relationships with families help build trust, improve communication and create a shared understanding of the person’s needs and preferences. Good dementia training should therefore include family perspectives and lived experience. When staff understand the emotional realities of caring, they are better equipped to support the whole family, not just the resident.
Accreditation and the sector’s wider reputation
Accreditation matters for reasons beyond compliance. CPD-accredited training gives staff something portable and recognised, which supports career progression within a sector that has historically struggled to demonstrate clear pathways. It also gives providers something concrete to show Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspectors, families making placement decisions and commissioners assessing quality.
More broadly, every accredited course delivered adds weight to an argument the sector needs to keep making: that care work is highly skilled work, not a fallback job. Adult social care is a highly skilled profession but is fighting a perception problem. High-quality dementia training reinforces the professional skills involved in delivering excellent, person-led care. It demonstrates a commitment to continuous learning and can help with recruitment and retention, because staff are more likely to stay where they feel invested in. Visible, recognised professional development is one of the more effective ways for providers to showcase commitment to their staff.
Making training accessible
The practical obstacles are familiar: releasing staff from rota during a period of chronic short staffing, funding training against a budget that is already stretched thin and finding provision that is actually accredited rather than a generic e-learning that ticks a box without building real competence. Rural and smaller providers face this the hardest, since sending even one member of staff off-site for a day can leave a shift dangerously thin.
This is where the format of training matters as much as the content. Fully remote training removes the travel burden and lets staff complete sessions around shift patterns, which matters enormously for providers who cannot spare a full day. But some of the most valuable learning, particularly around communication techniques and de-escalation, benefits from in-person practice and role play that is harder to replicate on a screen. Building in time and investment to make this possible is worth it. Rather than viewing online and face-to-face learning as competing options, organisations should consider how each can support different learning objectives.
For providers thinking about their training strategy for the year ahead, a few questions are worth asking directly. Is current training accredited and mapped to a recognised framework or is it a generic session bought to satisfy an audit point? Does it include family communication, not just clinical content? Is delivery structured in a way that actually fits rotas, combining remote flexibility with enough in-person practice to build real confidence? Is there any route for staff, including managers, who are dealing with dementia in their own family life, to get support?
Looking ahead
The future of adult social care will, in many ways, be shaped by dementia. More people will require specialist support. More families will need guidance as they provide dementia care at home with the support of agencies. More communities will be affected. This presents challenges but it also presents an opportunity to build a workforce that is confident, skilled and recognised for its expertise – an opportunity to support families more effectively and ensure people living with dementia receive the compassionate, person-led care they deserve.
Training alone is not the answer to every challenge facing the sector. But it is one of the most powerful tools we have. When staff feel confident, residents benefit. When families feel understood, relationships improve. When managers are equipped to lead dementia-informed services, everyone experiences better outcomes. As dementia continues to touch more lives, investing in skills is not simply a workforce development decision but an investment in the future quality of care itself. There is increasing overlap between high-quality care and confident dementia care.
How will your organisation invest in its workforce over the next 12 months? Comment on this feature or join the conversation to share your thoughts.
Frances Lawrence is Chief Executive at Dementia Carers Count. Email: [email protected] Linkedin: @Frances-Lawrence