Senior residing operators are equipping employees with new techniques and instruments to serve tomorrow’s reminiscence care residents in a extra personalised and expert manner in 2026.
An estimated 7.2 million folks 65 and older had been residing with Alzheimer’s illness in 2025, and that determine is predicted to extend to almost 14 million by 2060, in line with the Alzheimer’s Affiliation. The Nationwide Institutes of Well being (NIH) experiences that 42% of individuals residing within the U.S. over the age of 55 may ultimately develop dementia.
Senior residing operators like Senior Useful resource Group (SRG) are getting ready for the evolving nature of reminiscence care and the anticipated demand for it with new coaching, in line with Vice President of Reminiscence Care Melissa Dillon. After becoming a member of the group in 2022, Dillon helped lead an overhaul of Enliven, the corporate’s reminiscence care mannequin, that included modifications in how SRG employees are skilled in reminiscence care settings. SRG now requires its reminiscence care administrators to earn their Licensed Dementia Practitioner (CDP) license.
“Past the data itself, I imagine this certification helps administrators really feel seen, valued, and elevated of their roles,” Dillon advised Senior Housing Information.
SRG isn’t the one reminiscence care operator doing so. Different suppliers, together with LCS, Senior Life-style, EverTrue and WesleyLife, even have taken steps to evolve reminiscence care fashions and produce new coaching alternatives to employees to maintain up with the excessive demand and class of recent reminiscence care operations.
Coaching to ‘scale back anxiousness and promote consolation’
The LCS reminiscence care program “Heartfelt Connections” continues to adapt to vary in reminiscence care, with coaching at present inserting larger emphasis on communication, emotional consciousness and understanding resident habits.
These modifications are enjoying out on the LCS-managed life plan group Broadview at Buy Faculty, the primary increased schooling partnership for LCS, in Buy, New York. Final 12 months, the group opened its reminiscence care section, the Excessive Level Heart for Care.
“Coaching at present helps employees higher acknowledge how dementia impacts notion and equips them with methods to reply in ways in which scale back anxiousness and promote consolation,” mentioned Well being Companies Director Brittaney Jones-Allen.
This coaching additionally extends past scientific employees for all staff members, Jones-Allen mentioned. This system consists of superior coaching and dementia practitioner certifications for workers who need to set up management careers in reminiscence care.
The LCS coaching program focuses on schooling, dementia development and communication methods, which has led to raised resident engagement, improved emotional well-being.
“Workers are higher outfitted to acknowledge particular person preferences and create supportive each day routines that promote consolation and familiarity,” Jones-Allen mentioned.
Chicago-based Senior Life-style adapts its reminiscence care coaching mannequin, often known as Embrace, on a rolling foundation as modifications or methods are launched, in line with Brittany Coleman, divisional company director of reminiscence care. Earlier this 12 months, Coleman was named Licensed Alzheimer’s Illness and Dementia Care Coach of the Yr by the Nationwide Council of Licensed Dementia Practitioners.
Coleman famous that Senior Life-style care groups discovered from the difficult instances throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, serving to to evolve their reminiscence care coaching practices to emphasise the significance of connection and socialization.
“These experiences deepened our understanding of the crucial function socialization performs in cognitive well being and emotional well-being, even throughout instances of bodily separation,” Coleman mentioned. “Consequently, coaching has positioned larger emphasis on person-centered care, significant connection and versatile programming methods that help residents as entire people.”
Senior Life-style’s coaching mannequin consists of required programs to earn a CDP certification, with roughly 200 employees now holding this credential for the reason that firm established this certification “as a regular,” in line with Senior Vice President of Scientific Companies Angel Morrison.
The largest impacts from the corporate’s renewed coaching program have been within the firm’s capacity to “persistently ship” high-quality, personalised dementia care inside its reminiscence care communities whereas “strengthening confidence” of Senior Life-style employees, Morrison mentioned.
“Total, the coaching has elevated each day operations by embedding evidence-based dementia care ideas into each side of how reminiscence care companies are delivered,” Morrison added.
Nonprofit senior residing supplier WesleyLife overhauled its reminiscence care coaching mannequin that has led to a discount in stress of employees and improved high quality of life for residents with dementia, in line with Director of Scientific Excellence Karie Kesterson-Gibson. The brand new coaching module consists of on-line classes and in-person coaching lessons, with lots of the modifications coming in response to rising resident acuity, together with rising household expectations in dementia care.
“There’s a larger want for our staff members to really feel assured and have the ability set of how to have the ability to work with folks residing with dementia,” Kesterson-Gibson mentioned.
In-person coaching may help enhance staff communication and produce larger empathy to reminiscence care residents for workers. For instance, in an empathy train, employees tried on glasses coated in petroleum jelly that mimicked the generally extreme imaginative and prescient impairments reminiscence care residents expertise.
In 2025, WesleyLife additionally not too long ago launched a CDP program that’s an eight-hour course open to all direct care staff employees and reminiscence care leaders, Kesterson-Gibson mentioned.
Overview of coaching ‘crucial’ to reminiscence care success
To ensure that suppliers to function thriving reminiscence care segments, it’s incumbent upon reviewing and adapting coaching, with these modifications being “crucial” due to the extent of care complexity.
St. Louis-based nonprofit supplier EverTrue launched its “StillYou Reminiscence Help” care mannequin in 2025 to maneuver past fundamental supervision to extra personalised dementia help in reminiscence care, in line with Vice President, Life Plan Communities Midwest Valerie Cooper.
EverTrue makes use of the Join, Assess, Reply, Consider, Share (CARES) evidence-based on-line coaching modules for annual and ongoing reminiscence care coaching for workers, whereas additionally incorporating empathy coaching through the use of “immersive, high-impact” simulations that assist care groups expertise the sensory and cognitive challenges of these residing with dementia.
The group can be piloting AI-related coaching by means of a partnership with one other simulation platform that enables caregivers to apply each day life interactions with a digital dementia affected person with AI-powered conversations. All EverTrue staff members, scientific and broader operations, are required to earn dementia certification yearly by means of the CARES platform.
“The mixture of certification (data) and empathy coaching (perspective) strengthens care high quality in a manner that’s seen to residents, households and exterior companions, aligning with EverTrue’s emphasis on innovation and excessive requirements,” Cooper wrote in an e mail to SHN.
Reviewing modifications in dementia coaching is a vital side of reminiscence care because the section is evolving quickly to be extra personalised.
“Common assessment of dementia coaching applications is crucial as a result of when supporting folks residing with dementia, every little thing will be proper and every little thing will be flawed—on the identical time,” Dillon mentioned.
Dillon’s overhaul led to the launch of SRG’s “Coaching In Particular person” program, which examined dwell classes, recorded classes and digital occasions in various durations to seek out the simplest methods of educating reminiscence care ideas.
That meant experimenting with lectures, interactive discussions, and empathy primarily based workout routines, whereas additionally assessing retention by means of quizzes and gathering suggestions, Dillon mentioned. Based mostly on these outcomes, SRG crafted a coaching program that features dwell, one-hour coaching for workers with a follow-up, one web page persevering with schooling lessons led by group reminiscence care administrators with quick quizzes, dialogue prompts, reflection gadgets and empathy workout routines.
Whereas this system is rarely “full,” this will get to the character of reminiscence care with fixed change; current employees should adapt to new conditions each day.
“We constantly add content material as wants come up. The first aim is to concentrate on the person experiences of present residents and discover how we will higher join with and help them,” Dillon mentioned.
Workers want entry to a “big selection of instruments, methods and views,” to fulfill the varied wants of residents in reminiscence care, she added. In-person coaching helps employees see the advantages of a “structured, interactive” dialogue that’s aimed on present resident experiences and desires.
Direct affect of recent coaching consists of improved relationships between reminiscence care residents and employees, particularly in eating, an space that may generally be hectic on residents, Dillon mentioned.
“When these approaches are used successfully, we frequently see residents eat extra, acquire weight, and turn out to be much less proof against care,” Dillon mentioned.
Kesterson-Gibson mentioned by coaching employees on trauma-informed care ideas that think about a residents’ previous and the way it impacts their dementia journey, reminiscence care employees are in a position to enhance resident-staff interactions.
“You must know who the particular person is in their very own story,” Kesterson-Gibson mentioned.
Discovering partnership alternatives has additionally helped evolve reminiscence care coaching for the Iowa-based nonprofit supplier, with WesleyLife establishing an settlement with a state-based group Dementia Associates of Iowa at considered one of its communities to coach employees and enhance reminiscence care by means of schooling on social perceptions of dementia.
“We’re investing in our communities. We’re investing in our staff members. We would like staff members to study and develop,” Kesterson-Gibson mentioned.
