Follow our page on Linkedin
News
Exclusive: Workforce dementia skills and training will be central to the regulator’s new strategy
Adult social care chief regulator Chris Badger gives TCHE editor Mary-Louise Clews an insight into the thinking so far behind the regulators dementia strategy, expected later this year. The quality of staff training to care for
people with dementia is “really, really important” and the Care Quality Commission will want to be “really sharp” at how the workforce is inspected and regulated within its new dementia strategy, expected later this year, the adult care chief inspector has told The Care Home Environment. Chris Badger’s comments come after
the CQC published a dementia care best practice review last month which flagged the importance of staff training ‘to communicate well, including using body language and non-verbal cues to avoid unintentionally undermining someone’ with the condition. The review also said that staff are keen to
undergo such training. Speaking to TCHE following Social Care
independent Commission chair Dame Louise Casey’s call for urgent government action to improve dementia care, Mr Badger said the regulator is “particularly interested in the level and competency of the workforce and the skills that they have and [are] given and supported to develop, to support people with dementia.” He added that the “literature is really clear that the quality of training for staff is really,
He added that he would ultimately feel the
new approach had been successful if it drives more people with dementia to be “supported with really personalised, high quality care with carers that really understand what dementia means, how best to interact with people with dementia, and how best to help that individual live the life they have always wanted to lead”.
really, really important, and that’s something we’re going to want to get out and be really sharp at, how we inspect and regulate against that.”
Highly personalised care Asked how the regulator’s new approach to rating dementia care would measure success, Mr Badger said it would “drill down into particular lines of enquiry” to rate the quality of services for people with the condition, but added that it would be “really important to understand what unpaid carers, family and loved ones of people with dementia say about their care and support”. “You can do this as a paper exercise, but
ultimately, you need to speak to people about how it’s feeling for them and how it’s working for them and therefore track the extent to which that’s improving or not,” he said.
Professor Martin Green: Bring back dementia diagnosis targets
The government should reinstate dementia diagnosis targets and create a stand-alone strategy to tackle the ‘biggest cause of death’, the Care England leader has said. Speaking to TCHE after Social Care independent Commission chair Dame Louise Casey’s call on the government to appoint a dementia tsar to deal with urgent improvements needed in the care of people with the disease, Professor Martin Green said new policy should be explicitly focused on the condition and not “subsumed into the frailty strategy.”
He said “ a systemic approach” is needed that involves the NHS but puts social care in the driving seat in working to reinstate” preventative strategies” that had previously been in place under former Conservative prime minister David Cameron, such as developing dementia friendly communities that help to prevent people needing crisis intervention. He added that there needs to be a “central carers strategy” to enable more effective support of those supporting people with dementia, who are “often older people themselves”.
Care home environments are “really important to me” Mr Badger also explained that care home environments are “really important” as the “intersection between the workforce within a care home and the residents.” “We need buildings that allow people to
support individuals [to] live the life they want to live in a personalised, safe way, and also facilitate staff working really effectively – and not get in the way.”
SCAN HERE To read the CQC’s guide to
best practice in dementia care
April 2026
www.thecarehomeenvironment.com 9
Ryzhkov -
stock.adobe.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47
