Building Dementia-Friendly Communities online course

Dementia-Friendly Canada created a free, self-paced Building Dementia-Friendly Communities online course to help professionals working in the recreation, library, retail, restaurant and public transportation sectors who are interested in fostering dementia-friendly awareness within their organizations.

This 75-minute interactive course will give organizations the knowledge and skills needed to increase support, inclusion and accessibility (both in the social and physical environments) for people living with dementia.

The course can be paused or stopped until a later time, making it easy for participants to fit into their schedules and learn in a way that is best for them.

This course will provide a foundational knowledge of dementia and outline the considerations that organizations can include in their social and physical environments in order to better support and include people living with dementia.

The information in this course is practical and can be applied to people from all levels of the organization – from customer-facing staff, to management and to key decision makers.

The course consists of the following four modules, and are tailored to each of the three sectors:

• What is a dementia-friendly community? An introduction to the concept and dementia friendly efforts at the community level.
• Dementia-friendly interactions: Social environment considerations, such as ways you can communicate effectively with someone living with dementia.
• Dementia-friendly spaces: Physical environment considerations, such as ways you can optimize your space to be dementia-friendly.
• Dementia-friendly policies, practices and services for organizations: Provides specific scenarios and recommendations.

This training makes it possible for local individuals, businesses, and organizations to make a real and important difference for the people affected by dementia that they interact with on a daily basis.