Health and social care support for people with dementia (CQC, 20 May 2025)

Summary

Dementia is caused by different diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia, which affect memory, thinking and the ability to perform daily tasks.

The number of people being diagnosed with dementia is increasing. In February 2025, nearly half a million people in England had a dementia diagnosis. The likelihood of developing dementia, becoming an informal carer or both in a lifetime in the UK is 55% (around 1 in 2).

This Care Quality Commission (CQC) report looked at people's experiences of living with dementia when using health and adult social care services, including the experiences of families and carers. It sets out the main themes that influence whether an experience is good or poor, and what health and care services are doing to improve these experiences.

CQC will use the findings in this report to help shape their work to define what good care looks like for people with dementia and inform the next phase of CQC’s Dementia Strategy.

Content

The CQC Dementia Strategy has 6 core objectives: 

1. CQC will co-produce evidence-based statutory guidance for what good dementia care looks like and link to good practice guidance under our assessment framework.
2. CQC will apply the statutory guidance across their regulatory activity.
3. CQC will use their independent voice to tackle inequalities and encourage improvement and innovation.
4. The CQC will be a dementia-friendly and inclusive organisation to benefit our staff and the wider public.
5. CQC staff will receive comprehensive dementia training and work with partners to influence training and competency for the health and social care workforce.
6. CQC will actively work in partnership with key stakeholders to collectively affect real change.

Work will be focused on the following areas:

Developing statutory guidance and defining good practice

CQC will work towards achieving objective 1 to develop statutory guidance. CQC will:

• involve people with lived experience, carers and a wide range of other stakeholders in co-production, ensuring the guidance is led by the voice and experiences of people who use services
• carry out research into the characteristics of effective dementia care, including learning from other countries and regulators, as well as further information gathering to develop a robust evidence base on which to build the statutory guidance principles.

Learning and development needs of CQC’s workforce

To ensure they are effective in our regulation of services for people with dementia, CQC will ensure that they understand and respond to the learning needs of their own staff in this area. This includes carrying out a learning needs analysis, defining learning objectives and developing training and guidance for CQC staff aligned to the statutory guidance we publish. 

Engagement and communication

CQC will apply a wide range of tools and approaches to involve people, carers, key stakeholders and CQC staff in the development of this work. They will continue to work collaboratively with other key stakeholders and policymakers on joint improvement ambitions and actions that enable good dementia care, in areas like workforce, system pathways and technology. They will share updates on our work with the public, providers and other partners and share future opportunities to get involved.