Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the impact of dementia training for adult social care staff on improving quality of life for (a) individuals with dementia and (b) their families.

We are committed to a professional, well supported social care workforce. Under the Health and Social Care Act 2008, providers must provide enough suitably qualified, competent, skilled, and experienced staff to meet the needs of the people using the service. Staff must receive the support, training, professional development, supervision, and appraisals that are necessary for them to carry out their role.

The required training needs are set out in the Dementia Training Standards Framework, which was commissioned and funded by the Department and developed in collaboration with the sector. It sets out the essential knowledge and skills and expected learning outcomes applicable across the health and care spectrum.

We now have a national career framework for adult social care, the Care Workforce Pathway, which is linked to several existing competency frameworks, including the dementia training standards framework.

The Department has also launched a new Level 2 Adult Social Care Certificate qualification which links to the outcomes in the Care Workforce Pathway. This contains the baseline knowledge required to provide quality care and will make sure that those who are starting out their careers have an informed awareness of dementia.

The Department delivers dementia research via the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). The NIHR has invested £6 million in two Dementia & Neurodegeneration Policy Research Units to increase evidence and inform policymaking in the Department and its health system partners. One of the units is undertaking a project which seeks to gather current evidence on how dementia training is best delivered to social care workers and explore stakeholder views on how this evidence could inform future policies and practice.