Common Core Principles for supporting people with dementia launched

News release 20 July 2011

New Common Core Principles for supporting people with dementia have been launched to develop a workforce that will respond confidently to the person with dementia and support the life they want to lead.

The new framework has been designed by Skills for Care, Skills for Health and the Department of Health to be adapted and used flexibly according to the specific needs of any organisation's workforce.

The principles provide the basis of training and development for individual workers, teams and for wider corporate training programmes. They have been mapped to generic National Occupational Standards and agreed units of learning available through the Qualifications and Credit Framework.

"With projections of up to 1.7 million people with dementia by 2051, then it is critical we develop a confident adult social care workforce who have the capability and skills to offer high quality support to those people and their families," says Skills for Care CEO Sharon Allen.

"The partnership approach to developing these easy to use principles was a clear recognition of the need to integrate frontline support services for people with dementia."

The framework will help health and social care workers develop joint ways of working with people with dementia in their communities.

"'In a 21^st century health service it is crucial that we work towards ensuring that every setting delivering care becomes dementia friendly," says Skills for Health CEO John Rogers.

"For this to become a reality all staff need to be equipped with the skills to recognise the signs of dementia, make appropriate adjustments to their work and the environment and refer on to specialist services when required. It is our hope that the Common Core Principles will go some way to helping us achieve that aim."

A link to the principles can be found here - Dementia

and a link to the Skills for Health dementia page can be found here http://www.skillsforhealth.org.uk/service-area/dementia.

Media enquiries:

Paul Clarke: 0113 2411297/ 07977519287. paul.clarke@skillsforcare.org.uk

Notes to editors:

1. Skills for Care is the employment-led strategic body for workforce development in adult social care in England, which is licensed jointly with its UK allies by UKCES to be the 'Skills for Care and Development' Sector Skills Council (SSC). Both organisations are chaired by Professor David Croisdale-Appleby. The other members of the SSC are the Children's Workforce Development Council (also for England), the General Social Care Council, the Scottish Social Services Council, the Care Council for Wales, and the Northern Ireland Social Care Council.
2. Skills for Care forms a strategic overview of workforce needs in adult social care, which accounts for nearly 1.6 million workers or 5 per cent of England's workforce, spread over 40,600 establishments employing care staff. Skills for Care members are drawn from groups representing public, private and voluntary sector care employers, along with representatives of staff, trainers, service users and informal carers. Social care includes residential care, domiciliary care and social work with all its specialisms.
3. Skills for Care and its SSC allies promote and develop the social care sector's National Occupational Standards which are statements of competence that describe 'best practice'.
4. Skills for Care regional committees are major brokers of funding for social care workforce development.