The Dementia Academic Action Group Project

Responding to the call from Health Education England (HEE) to ensure there is an effective workforce to provide care for people with dementia, commissioned proactive work was undertaken across the Thames Valley region to meet the HEE mandate. In January 2014, Health Education England Thames Valley (HEETV) established the Dementia Academic Action Group (DAAG) to deliver a two year three-phase project to develop, design, and deliver dementia awareness (Tier 1) training in the region and to support activities to meet the HEETV training targets, as set out by HEE. The DAAG membership included University of Northampton (Project Lead) the University of West London, Oxford Brookes University, the University of Bedford. The overall project consisted of a scoping review to identify what Tier 1 dementia training was being delivered across the region, with a view to informing the development of a co-ordinated approach to ongoing and future dementia training (Phase 1); the design, development, and delivery of two training packages to 2889 health and care workforce across the region, which were based on the findings of Phase 1, which was delivered by four facilitators from the four HEIs (Phase 2); and an evaluation of data collected and analysed from the facilitators and workshop attendees which was used to support the development of the final training packages and resource materials (Phase 3) which have been available from HEETV since May 2016.