As the Baby Boomer population ages and life expectancy increases, the number of individuals aged 70 and older that will be living with dementia is expected to increase dramatically in the coming years. A recent report by the RAND Corporation supports this – over 88 million Americans in that age group will live with dementia by 2050, more than doubling the 40 million experiencing this in 2010.

With such an increase, family caregivers are going to need all the help that they can get, especially considering the financial and emotional strains this can put on a person. For their part, professional direct care workers will need adequate training. In fact, the report itself states that there is a pressing need to “create new and disseminate existing dementia best practices and training programs for professional and paraprofessional care workers.”

RAND’s team of experts has narrowed down their list of solutions to a few objectives that will help to address the challenges of such an increase in people living with dementia. Perhaps most pressing for people working in direct care services is RAND’s third objective—“Promote high-quality care focused on meeting the needs of individuals and family caregivers.”

The DirectCourse/College of Personal Assistance and Caregiving (CPAC) course, Roles and Responsibilities of a Home Care Provider, is one of many outstanding online lessons that help prepare home care providers, other caregivers and family members to the often challenging task of working with people with dementia. Consisting of five lessons, this course will help learners understand the basics of quality home care, thus empowering them to handle the most complex cases, avoiding abuse and neglect, and other issues. As with all the CPAC courses, this was developed by the Community Living Policy Center at the University of California, San Francisco.

For a more detailed summary of the RAND Report, Improving Dementia: Long-Term Care—A Policy Blueprint, please visit: http://phinational.org/blogs/report-direct-care-workers-should-be-trained-dementia-care