Practical dementia resources
Maureen Cossar, Senior Improvement Advisor
About this toolkit
Warning
Scheduled review of content, the adding of new content, content withdrawal, and any proposals for content changes, will be overseen by the Senior Improvement adviser for dementia, as designated reviewer.
The Care Inspectorate dementia practice development group will be responsible for undertaking the review of the toolkit coupled with input from members of the advisory group. Once reviewed they will approve or reject content, with senior management approval being requested where deemed necessary. This process will provide subject matter expertise, include proof reading of content and include assignment of editorial information.
The toolkit contains media files that have been developed for this resource, by the Care Inspectorate, with oversight and input from our comms department. We plan to continue adding to this bank of media resources with continued comms support. These files will also be subjected to the same process outlined above.
In the situation where there is an exceptional requirement for urgent changes to be made and disseminated quickly, group members will be asked to contribute out with an scheduled group meetings.
This toolkit was developed using the Scottish Approach to Service Design so that we developed the resource with and for frontline care staff.
This shared learning platform offers practical stories and useful tools that can support others in similar roles and aim to complement dementia learning and training.
The content, appearance, tiles, information, and links were all decided and reviewed through ongoing codesign opportunities.
An advisory group was established and met regularly to provide clinical knowledge, professional experience and oversight. The membership included representation from social care staff, lived experience, third party sector, psychology, psychiatry, NES, SSSC, Scottish Care, Age Scotland.
Each shared learning impact story was reviewed and agreed to be in line with current validated evidence and best practice and in accordance with the Dementia SIGN guidelines and the dementia Promoting Excellence Framework.
Relevant links, for each impact story, to validated and approved resources, have been provided to further develop the users learning, competence and confidence.
The group also developed prompting questions to support the users when reflecting on the content they access.
The toolkit development was supported and funded by the Scottish Government dementia policy team, and further oversight and input was gained through the Dementia Strategy and Delivery Plan, workforce delivery group.
The toolkit has been signed off by the Care Inspectorate Head of Quality & Participation and the Care Inspectorate’s Executive Director of Assurance and Improvement on Friday, 17 April 2026.
This toolkit is not a medical device.
The toolkit has minimal risk to patient safety. Disclaimers have been added to the toolkit about following processes. Links have been included to signpost to Turas Dementia Learning Site. It has been highlighted that this is not a training resource, but a shared learning platform.
All content has been checked for copyright compliance.
Icons are sourced from Flaticon.com, accessed through the licence held by Tactuum Ltd as software provider of the RDS platform.
Consent has been gained from all those who shared their stories.
The shared learning stories are provided in various formats i.e. videos, animations and podcasts. Most are between 1-5 minutes long. All written information is in plain English.
The navigation of the platform and accessibility have been subject to ongoing review by users and the advisory group members.
Content has been checked for accessibility in line with the relevant RDS standard operating procedure.
Functionality testing of the visual pathway was carried out by members of Care Inspectorate staff and the projects advisory group. The usability testing and acceptance testing were carried out by invited end users to workshops on 20th and 22nd April. Feedback was provided verbally and submitted via a digital form. All feedback was carefully considered and action taken to improve the toolkit.
A feedback form has been made specifically for this toolkit. It is clearly displayed as a tile, found on the landing page beside the other tiles. The form goes directly to an email inbox specifically for this project which is monitored by the project business support. They will then notify the dementia senior improvement advisor and the appropriate action taken, in accordance with the individual feedback or complaint received.
The feedback form can also be found here: Practical Dementia Resources - Feedback & questions – Fill in form
- The Right Decisions Platform (RDP) does not store or process any person-identifiable user data.
- If you use the RDP feedback form, you will be asked to provide an email address so that the Right Decisions team can respond to your comments. This email address is not stored in the RDP platform. It is sent to a secure NHS email address within Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS). A record of the enquirer, comment and response will be stored within the HIS secure Intranet in compliance with local information governance procedures.
- HIS will only use personal data as set out in the HIS privacy statement
which provides information about how HIS processes any personal data provided by you, in accordance with applicable data protection legislation.