The six-hour dementia care course your caregivers take on their own phones, in their first sixty days. Eight modules, one real task on a shift after each, and a check nobody passes by skimming. It covers the seven topics Illinois names for initial dementia training, and it ends with a record a surveyor can read and a door to Dementia Steady Proficiency.
Groundwork is the caregiver route in the Dementia Steady program: the reading and the first practice of the Steadier Ground Method, done alone, on a phone, in the gaps of a working week. Notice, Read and Reach, on the foundation of who the person still is, with Steady as the ground beneath all of it. Three fictional clients, Frank, Eleanor and Miriam, run the whole way through, so by Module 8 a caregiver knows them the way they will come to know a real client.
It is not a slide deck with a quiz at the end. Every module is built around moments a caregiver already recognizes: the door that does not open, the shower that is refused, the client who was fine on Monday and is not on Wednesday. The lesson is what to do in the next minute, and when the next minute belongs to a nurse or a doctor instead.
Every module runs the same way, so the second one is already familiar.
In the order they open. Nothing here teaches a caregiver to name what a client has; the diagnosis is a record field a doctor writes, and the course says so in Module 1.
What the line on the care plan tells a caregiver and what it does not: what dementia changes and in what order, four common kinds by what each changes first, and one rule that decides who to call. Months is the disease. Today is the body.
Six examples of Reach for someone whose words are becoming unreliable, and the Care Profile that tells staff who they are reaching.
Read, opening on the body. Refusal, repetition, agitation and accusation read for the need underneath, and what a caregiver does with what they find.
Personal care under pressure. Three reasonable attempts, then stop; what the room can produce; what goes to the nurse the same shift.
The late afternoon, persistent refusal, paranoia, exit-seeking and the family in the room. Notice turned inward, and Steady as the ground under all five.
Notice turned outward, and the five-element observation note a supervisor can act on and a doctor takes seriously.
Safe environments and meaningful activity as one idea: what the room is asking of the person, which hazards come back once they are alone, and a day with their job in it.
One full run, end to end: the first approach that does not land, the second attempt, the decision about what to stop and who to call, the handoff, and the note. Then the brief for Proficiency.
Illinois's Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias Services Act asks a licensed home services or home nursing agency for six hours of dementia training in an employee's first 60 days and three hours a year after, covering seven named topics. Illinois approves no training vendor. What a surveyor reads is the subject matter and the hours, so that is what the Certificate of Completion states.
| Topic named in the Act | Where Groundwork covers it |
|---|---|
| Understanding dementia | Module 1, What Dementia Changes |
| Communicating effectively | Module 2, How to Reach Them |
| Assisting with activities of daily living | Module 4, The Hardest Room in the House, alongside your agency's own technique training |
| Problem solving with challenging behavior | Modules 3 and 5, Behavior is Communication and Notice and Steady |
| Fundamentals of dementia care | Modules 2, 6 and 8: the Care Profile, the observation note, and the full run |
| Safe environments | Module 7, The Home and the Day |
| Managing activities | Module 7, The Home and the Day |
The certificate lists the seven topics with the hours against each and the general home services training subjects the course touches, so an agency can file it without writing a crosswalk. It says the training covers the topics named in the Act. It never says approved, because nothing is. The three annual hours come from the practice library below, and the supervisor who has completed the Lead Track meets the Act's supervisor requirement by curriculum rather than by five years of experience. Agencies outside Illinois get the same record; check it against your own state's rule.
Groundwork is the reading. Two things turn it into something an agency can stand behind.
Everything a caregiver needs to know about the method is free on this site, including the family course, and Groundwork does not change that. What an agency licenses is the course as a system: the modules with their checks, the field tasks and the supervisor's sign-off, the measured hours, the Certificate of Completion, and the door to Proficiency. It is licensed per agency, by headcount, for a year at a time, with no per-seat fee, so a new hire in month eleven costs nothing extra. Pricing is published when it opens. Ten free Steady Check sittings and the free workshop are available now, and are the right place to start before then.
Groundwork is in independent clinical review and is not yet available. Leave your details and you will hear once, when it opens, with the pricing. Nothing else.