Around 70% of residents in older age residential care homes in England are living with dementia making dementia the single most common condition that care home staff encounter, support, and manage every working day. Yet research published by Skills for Care and referenced by the Alzheimer’s Society in October 2025 shows that only 29% of the care workforce in England has received any kind of dementia training.
That gap between the prevalence of dementia in the people receiving care and the proportion of staff trained to support them is not invisible to the CQC. The CQC’s 2024 State of Care report identified a lack of staff understanding of the specific needs of people with dementia as one of its key areas of concern. In May 2025, the CQC published a dedicated dementia care report that found health and social care staff do not always understand the specific, personal care needs of people with dementia, and that care environments sometimes fail to support people’s wellbeing. The report called for a statutory duty for dementia-specific training for all CQC-registered providers.
For care home operators, domiciliary care providers, and any registered service where residents or clients are living with dementia, that data tells a clear story: dementia awareness training is no longer a nice-to-have supplementary CPD course. It is the training intervention most directly connected to the care quality that CQC inspectors are actively scrutinising, and that the people you care for depend on every day.
This guide covers the full landscape of dementia awareness training in the UK the Dementia Training Standards Framework, what training is required and recommended at each tier, what effective dementia training actually covers, and how Younique Talent LTD delivers CPD-accredited dementia courses built around the specific needs of care home and community care settings.
The Scale of Dementia in UK Care Settings
Understanding the scale of dementia in the people UK care services support is the necessary starting point for any conversation about dementia training. The numbers are significant, and they are growing.
According to NHS England’s workforce training and education guidance on dementia, there are around 850,000 people living with dementia in the UK. That figure is set to rise to over one million in the near future and is projected to reach two million by 2051. The NHS 10 Year Health Plan for England, published in 2025, identifies dementia as a priority area and commits to delivering the first ever Frailty and Dementia Modern Service Framework a signal that policy attention and inspection scrutiny in this area will only intensify in the years ahead.
The practical implication for care home staff is stark. If 70% of care home residents are living with dementia, then dementia awareness is not a specialist add-on for dedicated dementia units it is foundational knowledge for every member of staff in every care home in the country, from registered nurses and senior care workers through to kitchen assistants, housekeeping staff, and receptionists who interact with residents regularly.
The Alzheimer’s Society’s October 2025 policy position on dementia training calls on national governments to ensure all care staff undertake dementia training, citing the 29% coverage figure as evidence of a training gap that is directly affecting care quality for one of the most vulnerable populations in the country.
The CQC’s May 2025 dementia care report was equally direct: it documented concerning disparities in the rates of abuse notifications in care homes where the majority of people were living with dementia, and called for a statutory duty for dementia-specific training for all CQC-registered providers. That recommendation has not yet been enacted in legislation but it signals clearly that care providers who have not invested in dementia training for their teams are operating with a practice gap that the CQC is actively identifying and documenting.
The Dementia Training Standards Framework: The National Benchmark for UK Care Staff
The authoritative reference point for dementia training in the UK is the Dementia Training Standards Framework originally developed by Health Education England, Skills for Health, and Skills for Care, and updated in February 2026 to reflect the NHS 10 Year Health Plan and the growing complexity of dementia care needs.
The Dementia Training Standards Framework from Skills for Health sets out a three-tier structure covering 14 key subject areas. Each tier is designed for a specific group of staff based on the nature and frequency of their contact with people living with dementia.
Tier 1: Dementia Awareness For All Staff
Tier 1 is the awareness level and is explicitly described as training that everyone should have not just clinical staff or direct carers, but all staff in settings where people with dementia are likely to be present. This includes housekeeping, catering, reception, and administrative staff in care homes and NHS settings.
Tier 1 covers the fundamental knowledge every care setting worker needs:
● What dementia is and the different types Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia, Lewy body dementia, and frontotemporal dementia
● How dementia affects the brain and behaviour over time
● The rights of people living with dementia, including their right to dignity, independence, and person-centred care
● How to communicate with someone living with dementia in a way that reduces distress and supports understanding
● How environments affect people living with dementia, and what makes an environment supportive or distressing
● Recognising distress and knowing how to respond in a calm, person-centred way
Tier 1 training is the foundation. It does not equip staff to provide specialist dementia care. But it ensures that every person who interacts with a resident or patient living with dementia however briefly does so with the awareness, respect, and basic communication skills that preserve dignity and prevent inadvertent harm.
Tier 2: Core Dementia Skills For Staff in Regular Direct Contact
Tier 2 is designed for all staff in settings where people with dementia are likely to appear, and who have regular direct contact with people living with dementia as part of their role. For care homes where the majority of residents are living with dementia, Tier 2 is the standard that direct care staff should meet.
Tier 2 builds on Tier 1 awareness and develops the practical skills that daily care requires:
● Person-centred approaches to dementia care understanding the individual behind the diagnosis
● Life history, life story work, and using biographical knowledge in care planning
● Understanding behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) including agitation, wandering, aggression, and withdrawal and responding effectively rather than reactively
● Communication strategies for different stages of dementia, including advanced dementia where verbal communication is limited
● Supporting nutrition, hydration, and oral health for people living with dementia
● Pain recognition and management for people who cannot self-report pain
● End of life care considerations specific to dementia progression
● Supporting families and carers including understanding the emotional impact on families and how staff can provide appropriate support
Tier 3: Leadership in Dementia Care For Specialists and Managers
Tier 3 is the specialist and leadership tier, designed for staff who lead dementia care, design services for people with dementia, or have a formal specialist role. Registered managers, dementia care leads, and clinical specialists fall into this group. Tier 3 covers service design, workforce development, specialist assessment and intervention, and the governance of dementia care quality across an organisation.
| Tier | Who Needs It | Core Focus | Examples |
| Tier 1 Awareness | All staff in any setting where people with dementia may be present | What dementia is, rights, dignity, basic communication | All care home staff, including non-clinical roles |
| Tier 2 Core Skills | Staff with regular direct contact with people living with dementia | Person-centred care, BPSD, communication, end of life | Care assistants, senior care workers, nurses |
| Tier 3 Leadership | Specialist and management roles in dementia-focused services | Service design, specialist assessment, quality governance | Registered managers, dementia leads, clinical specialists |
Is Dementia Training Mandatory for UK Care Staff?
This is one of the most frequently asked questions by care home managers and registered managers evaluating their training obligations. The answer requires some care, because the legal and regulatory picture is more nuanced than a simple yes or no.
As confirmed by the Alzheimer’s Society’s October 2025 policy position, no specific legal requirement currently exists for care staff to undertake dementia training in England, Wales, or Northern Ireland. There is no equivalent of the Oliver McGowan statutory requirement for dementia training at the time of writing, dementia training remains recommended rather than legally mandated.
However, the absence of a statutory mandate does not mean dementia training is optional for care providers whose residents or clients are living with dementia. Under CQC Regulation 18, providers must ensure that staff receive training appropriate to their regulated activities and their service user group. For a care home where 70% of residents are living with dementia, the absence of dementia training for care staff is an obvious and immediate failure to meet that requirement because the training is directly relevant to the primary condition of the majority of service users.
The CQC’s May 2025 dementia care report makes the CQC’s position unmistakable: inadequate dementia-specific training for care staff is a documented quality concern that the regulator has publicly and formally highlighted. The report called for a statutory duty signalling that the CQC’s view is that current voluntary provision is insufficient and that regulatory action is likely to follow.
For practical purposes, care providers supporting people with dementia should treat dementia awareness training as a mandatory requirement under their Regulation 18 obligations not because a specific piece of legislation names it, but because its absence represents an obvious training gap in relation to the specific needs of their service user group. Inspectors will find and document that gap.
What Effective Dementia Awareness Training Covers
Dementia training that satisfies both the Dementia Training Standards Framework and CQC inspection expectations covers a specific and substantial curriculum one that goes well beyond a general overview of what dementia is.
The 14 key subject areas of the Dementia Training Standards Framework, as referenced by Forward With Dementia and the Skills for Health framework documentation, provide the curriculum structure that quality dementia training programmes map to. These are:
| Subject Area | What It Covers |
| 1. Understanding dementia | Types of dementia, causes, progression, and the impact on the individual |
| 2. Person-centred approaches | Understanding the person behind the diagnosis; life history and biography |
| 3. Communication | Verbal and non-verbal communication strategies across stages of dementia |
| 4. Health and wellbeing | Physical health needs of people with dementia, co-morbidities, and pain recognition |
| 5. Nutrition, hydration, and oral health | Managing eating, drinking, and oral care challenges in dementia |
| 6. Physical health and dementia | Frailty, falls, and physical health management in the context of dementia |
| 7. Mental health and dementia | Depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions alongside dementia |
| 8. Ethical and legal considerations | Consent, capacity, Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS), and the Mental Capacity Act |
| 9. Working with families and carers | Supporting families; carer wellbeing and the emotional impact of caring |
| 10. Environments | Dementia-friendly design principles and how environments affect wellbeing |
| 11. Activities and occupation | Meaningful activity, reminiscence, and the role of occupation in quality of life |
| 12. Behavioural symptoms | Understanding and responding to BPSD with non-pharmacological approaches |
| 13. End of life care | Advance care planning and compassionate end of life support in dementia |
| 14. Integration and coordination | Working across health and social care boundaries to provide coordinated dementia support |
Effective dementia training does not have to cover all 14 subject areas at the same depth for every staff member the Dementia Training Standards Framework explicitly acknowledges that not all outcomes will be relevant for everyone. What matters is that the training delivered to each staff group is appropriate to the role, to the intensity of contact with people living with dementia, and to the specific risks and needs of the service user group.
For Tier 1 training appropriate for all care home staff the core focus areas are understanding dementia types and progression, person-centred communication, dignity and rights, and basic environment awareness. For Tier 2 training appropriate for direct care staff the curriculum expands to include BPSD understanding and response, nutrition and hydration challenges, pain recognition, and end of life care awareness.
Online Dementia Awareness Training: Why It Works for Care Teams
Online dementia awareness training has become the most widely used delivery model for Tier 1 and the knowledge component of Tier 2 training in UK care settings and the practical reasons for that shift are compelling.
Care home staff work shift patterns that make scheduled classroom training chronically difficult to manage without either disrupting care ratios or incurring significant overtime costs. A Tier 1 dementia awareness module that can be completed on any device, during a quieter period of a shift or at home before an early morning start, is accessible in a way that a scheduled training day is simply not.
For care providers with high staff turnover where training new starters promptly is both urgent and operationally challenging online dementia training allows new team members to complete their awareness training before they provide unsupervised care with residents living with dementia. This is the practical implementation of the Regulation 18 obligation for training that is appropriate to the service user group.
Online delivery also allows employers to document training completion consistently. Every learner who completes a formally assessed online dementia awareness course receives a CPD-accredited certificate with a completion date, an expiry date, the provider name, and the accreditation reference exactly the format CQC inspection documentation requires. Classroom training delivered in-house, by contrast, often produces only an attendance register and a handout documentation that is insufficient for the evidentiary standard CQC inspectors now apply.
For Tier 2 training where practical skill development and reflective practice alongside direct care colleagues adds genuine value a blended approach works well: online knowledge delivery for the theoretical curriculum, followed by facilitated team reflection sessions or supervised practice observations in the care setting. This blended model delivers comprehensive training at lower cost and with less operational disruption than full classroom delivery, while maintaining the quality of practice development that Tier 2 training requires.
CPD Dementia Training: How Accreditation Supports CQC Inspection Evidence
CPD-accredited dementia training provides a specific layer of quality assurance that matters both for individual professional development and for employer compliance documentation.
The CPD Certification Service the UK’s leading independent CPD accreditation body independently assesses training content for accuracy, relevance, and assessment quality before awarding CPD accreditation. For dementia training specifically, CPD accreditation means the content has been verified as accurate, aligned with current dementia care guidance and evidence, and structured in a way that produces genuine learning outcomes rather than passive information consumption.
For CQC purposes, CPD-accredited dementia training certificates carry a verified reference number that inspectors can identify as evidence of quality-assured training. In the context of the CQC’s May 2025 dementia care report which explicitly identified a lack of dementia-specific training as a quality concern being able to produce CPD-accredited dementia training records for every member of staff is the most straightforward evidence an employer can offer that they take dementia care quality seriously.
For individual care workers, CPD-accredited dementia training contributes to a professional development portfolio that supports career progression, appraisal records, and for those working towards formal qualifications provides the documented learning foundation that supports Level 3 health and social care qualification study.
Dementia Training for Care Homes: Building a Whole-Team Approach
The evidence on dementia care quality is clear: the best outcomes for people living with dementia come from whole-team training approaches, where every member of staff regardless of role has the awareness and communication skills to interact with residents in a way that supports wellbeing and prevents distress.
A whole-team approach to dementia training in a care home setting has three practical components:
Universal Tier 1 awareness for all staff. Kitchen staff, cleaners, activities coordinators, and administrative team members all encounter residents living with dementia. A resident who is distressed or confused in the corridor at 7am is as likely to interact first with a member of housekeeping as with a registered nurse. Tier 1 training ensures those interactions are safe, dignified, and supportive rather than inadvertently distressing.
Tier 2 core skills training for all direct care staff. Care assistants, senior care workers, and support workers who are providing regular personal care, managing mealtimes, supporting residents during activities, or providing end of life care need the deeper knowledge and practical skills that Tier 2 training develops. The CQC’s dementia care report explicitly identified that staff not understanding the specific, personal care needs of people with dementia was a recurring finding Tier 2 training is the direct intervention for that gap.
Tier 3 leadership training for registered managers and dementia leads. The governance of dementia care quality in a service depends on managers who understand how to assess dementia care quality, identify training gaps, support staff development, and design care environments and routines that support people living with dementia to live well. Tier 3 training and specialist CPD are the professional development routes for this group.
Building this layered approach from a single training provider with consistent certification formats, coordinated renewal management, and a single employer dashboard tracking every staff member’s dementia training status is the most operationally efficient way to implement and evidence a whole-team dementia training programme.
Younique Talent LTD: Dementia Awareness Training for UK Care Providers
Younique Talent LTD delivers CPD-accredited dementia awareness training as part of our comprehensive health and social care training suite. Our dementia courses are designed specifically for care home and community care settings, aligned with the Dementia Training Standards Framework, and built around the specific challenges that care staff face when supporting people living with dementia every day.
What Younique Talent LTD’s dementia awareness training covers:
● Understanding dementia types, progression, and the brain changes that drive behaviour
● Person-centred approaches and the importance of life history in dementia care
● Communication strategies for people living with dementia at different stages, including advanced dementia
● Dignity, rights, and person-centred care in practice
● Understanding and responding to behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD)
● How environment affects people living with dementia and what care staff can do about it
● Supporting nutrition, hydration, and oral health for residents with dementia
● Recognising pain and distress in people who cannot self-report
● End of life care awareness for people living with dementia
● Supporting families and carers what care staff can offer, and where the boundaries lie
How the training is delivered:
Fully online and accessible on any device, 24 hours a day. Every course includes structured checkpoint assessments and a formal end-of-course test. Learners must achieve the minimum pass mark to receive their CPD-accredited certificate. Certificates are issued immediately on passing and include all fields required for CQC inspection documentation learner name, course title, completion date, renewal date, provider name, and CPD accreditation reference.
What the employer platform provides:
Real-time tracking of every staff member’s dementia training status across all tiers. Automated renewal alerts before certificates expire. Instant access for new starters on day one of employment. Exportable training records in CQC-ready format.
Frequently Asked Questions: Dementia Awareness Training UK
Is dementia training legally required for care home staff in the UK?
No specific legislation currently mandates dementia training in England, Wales, or Northern Ireland. However, under CQC Regulation 18, all registered providers must ensure staff receive training appropriate to their regulated activities and service user group. For care homes where the majority of residents are living with dementia, the absence of dementia training is an obvious Regulation 18 failure. The CQC’s May 2025 dementia care report called for a statutory duty for dementia-specific training for all CQC-registered providers so regulatory requirements in this area may tighten further.
What is the Dementia Training Standards Framework?
The Dementia Training Standards Framework, developed by Health Education England, Skills for Health, and Skills for Care and updated in February 2026, is the national benchmark for dementia training in health and social care. It sets out a three-tier structure covering 14 key subject areas. Tier 1 covers awareness training for all staff; Tier 2 covers core skills for staff with regular direct contact; Tier 3 covers specialist and leadership training. The framework is aligned with the NHS 10 Year Health Plan and supports the consistent delivery of quality-assured dementia education across the UK care workforce.
What should Tier 1 dementia awareness training cover?
Tier 1 dementia awareness training should cover what dementia is and the different types, how dementia affects the brain and behaviour, the rights of people living with dementia, basic person-centred communication strategies, how environments affect people living with dementia, and how to recognise and respond to distress. Tier 1 is the minimum awareness level expected for all staff in any care setting including non-clinical roles such as kitchen, housekeeping, and administration staff who interact regularly with residents.
How often should dementia awareness training be renewed?
Dementia awareness training is typically refreshed every two to three years. However, the Skills for Care guidance recommends competency-led refresh cycles meaning renewal should also be triggered by role changes, significant changes to the resident group, or care incidents where a training gap is identified. Younique Talent LTD’s automated renewal alerts ensure your team’s dementia training is always renewed before certificates expire.
Can dementia awareness training be completed online?
Yes. Online delivery is appropriate for Tier 1 and for the knowledge component of Tier 2 dementia training. The CQC assesses whether training was effective and appropriate not whether it was delivered in a classroom. Online dementia training with formal assessment, CPD accreditation, and structured content mapped to the Dementia Training Standards Framework meets both CQC and professional development requirements. For Tier 2 training, many care providers supplement online knowledge delivery with in-setting team reflection sessions for the practical skills component.
What is the difference between Tier 1 and Tier 2 dementia training?
Tier 1 is dementia awareness training appropriate for all staff, covering what dementia is, how it affects people, and how to communicate respectfully and supportively. Tier 2 is core skills training for staff who work directly and regularly with people living with dementia, covering person-centred care planning, understanding and managing BPSD, supporting nutrition and hydration, recognising pain, and end of life care awareness. For care home direct care staff, Tier 2 is the appropriate standard. For non-direct care staff, Tier 1 provides the essential awareness.
How does dementia training affect CQC inspection outcomes?
The CQC’s May 2025 dementia care report explicitly identified a lack of dementia-specific training as a quality concern, and inspectors actively assess whether care staff understand the specific, personal care needs of the people they support. Providers with documented, CPD-accredited dementia training for all staff are better positioned during inspection than those who cannot produce training evidence. The CQC’s call for a statutory dementia training duty signals that inspection scrutiny in this area will only increase in the years ahead.
The Right Training Makes a Measurable Difference
Only 29% of the care workforce in England has received dementia training. Around 70% of care home residents are living with dementia. The gap between those two figures is the practice gap that drives the poor outcomes the CQC’s 2025 dementia report documented and it is a gap that every care provider has the tools to close.
Younique Talent LTD‘s CPD-accredited dementia awareness training is built around the Dementia Training Standards Framework, aligned with CQC inspection expectations, and designed to be completed by every member of a care home team from senior nurses to kitchen staff on any device, at a time that works around their shift.