D-Esc

Suitable for: Aged care, Allied health, Disability care, Home and community care, Hospitals, Retirement living, Aged care decision-makers, Allied health assistants, Disability care staff, Diversional therapists, Facility managers/coordinators, Lifestyle officers, Occupational therapists, Physiotherapists, Practice nurses, Registered nurses, Residential care workers, Social workers, Speech therapists, Support staff

Course type: Changed behaviours and management, Funded training

Duration: Three hours

Delivery mode: Face-to-face

Location: All states and territories

Number of participants: 15 participants maximum

Cost: Free to eligible users with funding support until June 2025

What you’ll learn

Build the confidence and capability of your staff. D-Esc teaches strategies to de-escalate situations, reducing the occurrence of occupational violence and high-risk behaviours in people living with dementia.

During the immersive workshop, you will learn how to:

• recognise emotional and physical signs of escalation
• understand how increased stress impacts a person with dementia
• apply person-centred de-escalation skills
• better contribute to debriefing to determine potential cause of behaviours
• reduce the risk of harm for both the person with dementia and staff.

Key benefits

• Reduce incidents of stress for people living with dementia, carers and families.
• Increase the confidence and personal safety of aged care workers.
• Promote staff retention through reduced high-risk scenarios.
• Enhance the personalised care, safety and quality of life for people living with dementia.

Learn through experience with your team

With the use of an experiential VR program in D-Esc, your staff can practice their response to the behaviour change in a controlled and safe simulated environment.

On the day, a trained facilitator will guide your staff through the immersive VR experience, so they can feel supported to get the maximum learning benefit.

"It was very, very useful and I think it’s very different from any other dementia training I’ve had because it was basically almost the same as hands on training. It was putting you right in the situation, the virtual reality was really quite unbelievable, it was very realistic. Then to work you through the scenarios from the real-life situation that you were actually put in was really incredibly helpful"

— Pauline, St Vincents Care Services Hawthorn

Join the waitlist

If you're looking for training for yourself as an individual, see our professional development and training page for individual health workers.

Acknowledgements

D-Esc is a fully funded workshop until June 2025, available to eligible participants. To confirm the eligibility of your staff, contact The Centre for Dementia Learning.

D-Esc is a Dementia Australia program created with support from The Rosemary Norman Foundation, Fitzpatrick Sykes Family Foundation, Navarra Care Foundation and Australian Communities Foundation through HDR Australia Fund, and is delivered by Dementia Australia (RTO Code 2512). 

With the support of Dementia Training Australia and the Australian Government, the D-Esc workshop is free for 6,500 eligible participants until 30 June 2025. For more information about DTA, please visit dta.com.au.