A workshop, on site or virtual, and a ten-minute assessment to start. Groundwork, the six-hour course your caregivers take on their own phones. Proficiency they have to earn. And the Lead Track for the supervisor who runs it all in your agency, so it ends inside your care system instead of inside a binder. Built from training dementia care staff and hundreds of first responders since 2012.
See how the workshop, Groundwork, and Proficiency work together for your team.
Most training proves someone sat through it. Steady Check shows what a caregiver does at the door, at the shower, and after something goes wrong: six people living with dementia, twelve decisions the way they would make them on shift, and a report your supervisors can act on the same day. Ten minutes, on their phone, before the client finds out for you.
Before anything is licensed, there's a single live session with your team, on site or virtual, built around real moments your caregivers already recognize. It's the fastest way to see whether the Steadier Ground Method fits how your organization actually works, before anyone commits to more.
Caregivers leave with a shared vocabulary for the hardest moments on shift, a felt sense of what changes when they change their approach instead of the person, and a clear picture of what Groundwork builds on. No slides to memorize and nothing to take home but the experience.
We're running the workshop with a small number of pilot organizations in 2027. Tell us where your team is based when you request one.
Everything your caregivers need to know about the method is free on this site, including the family course. What an agency licenses is the record, the practice and the proof.
Eight modules, three fictional clients your staff follow the whole way through, a real task on a shift at the end of every module, and a check the reading has to be done to pass. No disease-biology lectures; the skills that change shifts, and the record a surveyor reads.
It's built from hands-on dementia care training delivered since 2012, condensed into practice your staff can actually use on shift, not lecture they sit through. The same eight modules are the practice library a Lead runs live, six sessions in pairs with a second attempt each, on your in-service calendar.
What the line on the care plan tells a caregiver and what it does not: what dementia changes and in what order, the four common kinds by what each changes first, and one rule that decides the tier. Months is the disease. Today is the body. Nobody is taught to name what a client has.
Six examples of Reach for someone whose words are becoming unreliable, and the Care Profile that tells staff who they are reaching. Staff who know who someone was read a refusal completely differently from staff who only know the diagnosis.
Notice, Read, and Reach applied on shift: catching your own reaction, reading refusal, repetition, agitation, and accusation for the need underneath, and responding to what the behavior is actually saying. The body gets ruled out first.
Personal care, and the readings a refusal needs before anyone touches the water. 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, with Steady underneath all of it. Not a fourth skill, the ground the other three stand on: what your body wants to do, and what to do instead.
The five-element observation note that supervisors can act on, doctors take seriously, and the client's care plan actually absorbs.
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. Purpose, not busywork.
One full scenario run end to end: the first approach that does not land, the second attempt, the decision about what to stop and who to call, a verbal handoff, and the note. Then the brief for the Proficiency assessment.
Groundwork covers the seven topics named in the Illinois Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias Services Act for initial training, and its Certificate of Completion states the training hours. Content is in clinical review and subject to it. More about Groundwork →
Nothing here asks an agency for six weeks of Zoom. The reading happens on the caregiver's own phone. The practice happens on your in-service calendar, run by your own Lead.
After Groundwork, or a practice cohort a Lead has run, every caregiver responds to a scenario they have never seen: read the behavior, respond with steadiness, write the note. It is scored against a fixed rubric with three gates no other score can offset: the body checked before the story, no arguing with the client, and a note the next caregiver can act on. Caregivers who fall short get coaching and a retake, because the goal is capability, not attrition.
A pass earns Dementia Steady Proficiency: a numbered Certificate of Proficiency in the Steadier Ground Method, issued by Dementia Steady and good for two years. Renewal is one new scored scenario, not the course again. That's what it means when it's hanging in your office: not that someone attended, but that they demonstrated the work. Your families can be told that. Your referral partners can be told that.
Every caregiver who finishes Groundwork also receives a Certificate of Completion stating the training hours and the topics covered, for their personnel file. Completion says they did the course. Proficiency says they can do the work.
Dementia Steady Proficiency is Dementia Steady's own assessment. It is not a state license or a certification, and it does not replace the dementia training your state requires.
Proficiency is not the end of the program. It is the point where the three skills stop belonging to one caregiver and start belonging to your operation, and the Lead Track is where a supervisor closes that loop. The note a caregiver writes at the end of a visit feeds the reassessment your supervisor makes from it, and that reassessment rewrites the one-page guide the next caregiver reads before walking in. What your staff learn on a Tuesday changes how your client is cared for by Friday, on a schedule, not by luck.
Every training decays without reinforcement, so the program ships with a sustainment layer: one five-minute scenario a month for every caregiver, a twenty-minute supervisor-run huddle each quarter, and pocket cards caregivers can reach for in the moment. The skills stay warm because the reps never stop.
It is the same method families learn on this site, in the same three words, and the free family course teaches it in full. Everything your caregivers need to know about the method is already free here. What a free course cannot give you is what the program is for: the personal care module, with the protocol for what the bathroom can produce and what goes to the nurse the same shift; the practice library your Lead runs, six sessions in pairs with a second attempt each; the loop from a caregiver's note to the supervisor's reassessment and the next shift's guide; and the scored assessment, the register, and the two certificates.
You are not paying to teach your staff the method. You are paying to know they can do it, and to be able to prove it. Read the whole method →
The Person-Centered Dementia Care Self-Assessment is 18 questions across five practice areas. You'll get a scored report showing where your team is strong and where person-centered practices are still inconsistent, with each gap mapped directly to the training that addresses it.
Takes about 10 minutes. Results are immediate. No compliance claims, no licensing implications: a practical diagnostic built for training coordinators and directors who want to know what to fix first.
You answer this one yourself, about the program as a whole. To see what an individual caregiver actually does under pressure, that is Steady Check.
Take the team self-assessmentAnyone whose work is dementia care: home care and home health, hospice, assisted living and memory care, adult day, and the care managers and educators who support them. The method is the same in every setting, because the moments are the same: the refusal, the question asked again, the person who was fine on Monday and is not on Wednesday.
Groundwork's scenes are set in a client's home, where the method was built. The method carries to every setting, and a version set in a community, with residents, halls and shift changes, is planned.
Two more sections built on the Steadier Ground Method, outside the training program: situation guides for police and EMS on calls that read as something else, and for nursing and hospital staff on the floor. Both free, no login and no email required.
Tell us a bit about your organization, including where your team is based and what you want to start with. We'll reply within one business day to talk through fit, format, and pricing, no commitment to start.