Dementia Care Level 2

Dementia Care Level 2 delivered at your workplace or live online. One full day. In-depth care planning, medication awareness, reflective practice, and advanced communication for staff working directly alongside people living with dementia.

Course Overview

In one session, a care worker with several years of dementia experience described how she handled a resident who became distressed every evening around five o’clock. The team called it sundowning and had learned to manage it: redirect, distract, and if necessary, call for support. Nobody had ever asked what the resident’s life had looked like at five o’clock before dementia.

She had worked in a bakery. She had spent decades finishing her shift, picking up her children, and starting the evening routine at exactly that time. The distress was not random. It was the expression of a deep routine that her brain still held, with nothing to meet it.

Dementia Care Level 2 is designed for care staff who are already working alongside people living with dementia and need a structured, in-depth programme that reflects the complexity of that work. It is not an introduction to dementia. It is a course built around the real challenges of dementia care in practice: how needs change as the condition progresses, how to respond to distress and behaviour with skill and compassion rather than habit, how to write care plans that genuinely reflect the person, and how to understand the medication picture well enough to know what to observe and when to escalate. The course reflects current best practice from Dementia UK, the Alzheimer’s Society, and NHS England’s Well Pathway for Dementia, and aligns with CQC Regulation 9: Person-Centred Care, Regulation 10: Dignity and Respect, and Regulation 17: Good Governance.

Course Details

  • Duration: Full day (6 hours)
  • Delivery: Face-to-face in-house or live online via Zoom or Microsoft Teams
  • Certificate: CPD-Accredited Certificate of Achievement in Dementia Care Level 2
  • Awarding organisations: CPD-Accredited
  • Validity: No formal expiry. Refresher is recommended every 1 to 3 years, or sooner following changes to guidance, significant changes in the needs of individuals being supported, or where supervision or audit identifies practice gaps.
  • Group size: Maximum 12 learners per trainer

Who This Course Is For

This course is designed for care staff who are actively involved in the direct care and support of people living with dementia and are ready to develop their practice at a deeper level.

  • Care assistants and support workers providing day-to-day dementia care
  • Senior carers and team leaders with oversight of dementia care practice
  • Residential, nursing home, and community care staff supporting individuals with moderate to advanced dementia
  • Domiciliary care workers supporting people living with dementia in their own homes
  • Staff whose role involves care planning, risk assessment, or supporting families in dementia care contexts

This course is most appropriate for learners with existing dementia knowledge who are ready to go deeper. It is not an introductory course. Staff who are newer to dementia should start with our Dementia Awareness course first.

Not sure which level is right for your team? Get in touch, and we’ll help you work it out before you commit.

Why This Training Matters

As dementia progresses, the complexity of care increases significantly. The needs of a person in the middle or later stages of dementia bear little resemblance to those of someone recently diagnosed. Behaviour changes. Communication becomes more difficult. Distress becomes more frequent. The risk of safeguarding concerns increases. And the care team’s ability to respond effectively becomes more critical to the individual’s quality of life and safety.

CQC inspectors look carefully at how dementia care is planned, delivered, and reviewed. Under Regulation 9: Person-Centred Care, Regulation 10: Dignity and Respect, and Regulation 17: Good Governance, inspectors look at whether care plans reflect the actual person and their current needs, whether staff can articulate why they are responding to behaviour in the way they are, whether risk is being managed in a way that preserves dignity and choice, and whether the medication picture is understood and monitored. A service where the dementia care team can answer those questions confidently is a service that demonstrates quality in the areas that matter most.

The Alzheimer’s Society and Dementia UK are both clear that skilled, knowledgeable, and reflective dementia care staff make a measurable difference to outcomes for people living with dementia. This course is how that skill is built.

What the Day Covers

All content reflects current best practice guidance from Dementia UK, the Alzheimer’s Society, and NHS England’s Well Pathway for Dementia throughout. Topics covered include:

  • Dementia progression: how the condition develops across stages and what that means for care needs, behaviour, and communication
  • Person-centred dementia care in practice: moving beyond the principle into specific, day-to-day application
  • Behaviour as communication: detailed exploration of common presentations, their likely causes, and effective responses
  • Communication at different stages: adapting approach for moderate and advanced dementia, including non-verbal and late-stage communication
  • Responding to distress, anxiety, and agitation: practical de-escalation strategies grounded in real dementia care situations
  • Detailed care planning: how to write and review care plans that accurately reflect the individual, their life history, preferences, and current needs
  • Medication in dementia care: an awareness-level overview of the types used, their purpose, common side effects relevant to care workers, and what to observe, record, and report
  • Positive risk-taking and safeguarding: holding both in balance and understanding when one overrides the other
  • Meaningful activity and emotional wellbeing: why activity matters in dementia care and how to make it genuinely meaningful
  • Working with families and unpaid carers: their experience, their role, and how the care team can support them
  • Reflective practice: examining real care situations, identifying what worked and what did not, and building critical self-reflection into dementia care practice

Every course is also built to include your organisation’s care planning documentation, assessment tools, and escalation processes as standard.

How the Course Is Delivered

This course is available face-to-face at your workplace or chosen venue, or live online via Zoom or Microsoft Teams. Both formats are fully interactive. Online delivery is a live session with the same case work, discussion, and trainer engagement as the room-based version, not a pre-recorded module. This is a full-day course, and the time is used.

Groups are capped at 12 to ensure every learner gets the space to engage fully with the material. Sessions are built around the real situations learners bring from their own practice, detailed case studies drawn from dementia care settings, and structured reflective discussion that moves between theory and application throughout the day. If your team has specific care situations they want to work through, we can discuss how to build that into the session during the enquiry process.

Delivery includes:

  • In-depth case study work covering complex dementia care scenarios, including distress responses, care planning challenges, and safeguarding considerations
  • Reflective practice exercises where learners examine their own responses to real situations from their working environment
  • Practical exploration of communication strategies, de-escalation approaches, and care planning frameworks
  • Coverage of your care planning documentation, assessment tools, and internal escalation processes

Dementia Awareness or Dementia Care Level 2?

Both courses are built around the same commitment to person-centred, dignity-led dementia care. They serve different staff groups and different stages of knowledge and practice.

Dementia Awareness is the right starting point for any member of staff who works with or around people living with dementia, regardless of role. It covers what dementia is, how it presents differently across individuals, how to communicate effectively, and how to recognise behaviour as communication. If your team includes staff with no formal dementia training, or staff who have worked in dementia care but never had that knowledge structured, start there.

Dementia Care Level 2 is for staff who already have that foundation and are actively involved in direct dementia care. It covers detailed care planning, medication awareness at a care worker level, structured reflective practice, and advanced communication for moderate and late-stage dementia. If your team includes experienced direct care staff whose practice has never been examined in depth, this is the course that does that work.

Many organisations run Awareness with all staff and Level 2 with their more experienced direct care team. We don’t make that determination for you; the responsibility sits with you. But we do provide guidance throughout the enquiry process.

Certification and Validity

On completion, learners receive a CPD-Accredited Certificate of Achievement in Dementia Care Level 2.

There is no formal expiry, but a refresher is recommended every 1 to 3 years, or sooner following significant changes to the needs of individuals being supported, changes to dementia care guidance, or where supervision, complaints, or audit identifies gaps in practice. For services aiming for Good or Outstanding CQC ratings in dementia care, building Level 2 into the regular training cycle is good practice. Our Dementia Awareness course remains the natural foundation for all staff new to dementia alongside this programme.

Why Organisations Book With Prima Cura

Most training providers arrive with a course. We arrive with yours.

Before the day, we gather information about your workplace: your incident reporting forms, your internal procedures, the specific hazards your team actually faces. On the day, your trainer works that into every scenario, every discussion, every practical exercise. If your staff work in a care home, they’re not practising on hypothetical office workers. If your team are lone workers, that context shapes how the session runs.

It means the training lands. Not because it was well-delivered in a generic sense, but because it was relevant to the people in the room and the situations they’ll actually encounter.

A few other things that matter to the organisations that book with us:

  • 98.9% learner satisfaction across all Prima Cura courses
  • All trainers hold Enhanced DBS certificates and maintain ongoing CPD
  • We advise honestly on the qualification level at the enquiry stage. If a different course is a better fit for your workforce, we’ll say so before you book, not after

We respond to all enquiries within one working day.

Where We Deliver

We deliver in-house training at your workplace or chosen venue across Manchester, Greater Manchester, and the wider North West. We also deliver nationally across England, including North England, South England, London, and Surrey.

All sessions are led by experienced Prima Cura Training instructors. Groups are capped at 12 per trainer to protect the quality of hands-on learning.

Our associate network means we can deliver across England. You can meet the team on our Associates page.

FAQs

What does this course cover that introductory dementia training does not?

This course goes significantly further in several areas. It covers detailed, person-centred care planning in dementia rather than just the principle of it. It includes an awareness-level overview of medication used in dementia care, what it is for, and what care workers should observe and report. It involves structured reflective practice where learners critically examine their own care responses using real case material. And it addresses complex dementia presentations, including distress, agitation, and late-stage communication, in practical depth rather than in passing.

Does this course cover medication in dementia care?

Yes, at an awareness level appropriate to the care worker role. The course covers the types of medication commonly used in dementia care, their purpose, common side effects relevant to care workers, and what to observe, record, and report. It does not train learners to administer or prescribe medication. That sits with registered nurses and prescribing clinicians. Understanding the medication picture well enough to observe and escalate accurately is part of delivering safe dementia care, and that is what this course addresses.

Does this course address ‘challenging behaviour’ in people with dementia?

This course does not use the term challenging behaviour. Behaviour in people living with dementia is always a form of communication, expressing an unmet need, pain, anxiety, confusion, or distress. This course works through that principle in detail, with real case material, so that learners leave with practical strategies rather than theoretical awareness. The bakery example in the opening of this page illustrates exactly the kind of shift in understanding this course is built to produce.

Does this course follow a dementia Care pathway?

Yes. This course is aligned with NHS England’s Well Pathway for Dementia, which sets out the standard for high-quality dementia care and support across all stages, from early identification through to end of life. The Well Pathway covers six key areas: preventing well, diagnosing well, supporting well, living well, dying well, and research. At Level 2, this course focuses particularly on the supporting well and living well elements of the pathway, addressing the skills and knowledge care workers need to deliver consistent, person-centred care as dementia progresses. For services working toward or maintaining a Good or Outstanding CQC rating in dementia care, alignment with the Well Pathway is one of the clearest ways to demonstrate that care is being delivered to a recognised national standard.

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Book or Enquire

Book your training or request a quote

Tell us your team size and your sector. We’ll come back with a quote, the right advice on qualification level, and a straight answer on whether this is the best course for your team.

We respond to all enquiries within one working day.

Our Commitment to Quality and Compliance

At Prima Cura Training, all courses reflect current UK guidance and best practice.

All trainers are experienced professionals with relevant qualifications and ongoing CPD. Because many of the organisations we support work with vulnerable individuals, all trainers hold Enhanced DBS checks.

This course is reviewed against updates from Dementia UK, the Alzheimer’s Society, NHS England’s Well Pathway for Dementia, the Care Quality Commission, and current UK dementia care guidance, including the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 and Skills for Care workforce standards.

You can read more on our Quality Assurance and Compliance page.

Reviewed by Stephanie Austin, Owner and Lead Trainer, Prima Cura Training | 25+ years in health and social care | 15+ years as a trainer | Last reviewed: June 2026 | Next review: June 2027

This page is for general guidance only and reflects UK legislation, NHS England guidance, and sector best practice current at the date of review. It does not constitute clinical or medical advice. Dementia Care Level 2 is a practice development course for care workers and does not replace clinical assessment, medical diagnosis, or specialist dementia intervention. The medication content within this course is delivered at an awareness level only and does not train or authorise care workers to administer, adjust, or advise on medication. Care workers must always act within their role, in line with the individual’s care plan, and in accordance with their organisation’s policies and procedures.

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