Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure that all adult social care workers caring for dementia patients are trained to level Tier 2 of the Dementia Training Standards Framework.

The national dementia strategy for England, the Challenge on Dementia 2020, set the expectation that all relevant health and care staff would have the appropriate dementia training, with the requisite training needs at different “tiers” set out in the ‘Dementia Training Standards Framework’.

Good progress has been made to date in training the social care workforce. It is estimated that around half of social care workers considered to need tier 2 dementia training have undertaken training to a level equivalent to it. The Department is currently exploring value for money options for further increasing take up of tier 2 training to everyone who needs it.