Free · Certificate included
Dementia & Alzheimer’s Awareness for Volunteers
Understand dementia and connect with compassion, patience, and confidence.
What you’ll learn
- Understand what dementia is — and that it’s a disease, not normal aging
- Step into the person’s reality instead of correcting or arguing
- Communicate simply, warmly, and with dignity
- Read behaviors as needs and use validation and redirection to de-escalate
- Keep people safe (wandering, sundowning) and connect with the person still there
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Create a free account →Course outline
- 1
What dementia actually is
Volunteering with someone who has dementia can feel intimidating — until you understand what’s really happening.
7 min Quiz - 2
Step into their reality
Because the disease rewrites a person’s sense of time, place, and recent memory, they may believe it’s 1975, ask for a parent who has passed, or insist they need to…
6 min Quiz Interactive - 3
Communicating with dignity
Good dementia communication is a learnable skill.
8 min Video Quiz Interactive - 4
Behaviors are communication
Agitation, repeating a question, pacing, refusing care, calling out — these “behaviors” can be confusing or upsetting.
6 min Quiz Interactive - 5
Redirection, de-escalation & sundowning
When emotions run high, you need a simple, reliable move.
6 min Quiz Interactive - 6
Safety & the environment
Dementia affects judgment and awareness of danger, so part of compassionate care is quietly keeping the environment safe — without being controlling.
5 min Video Quiz - 7
Connection & caring for yourself
Here’s the most hopeful truth in this course: the person is still there.
5 min Quiz
Sources & further reading
- Alzheimer’s Association — What Is Dementia? Types & Communication Tips
- National Institute on Aging (NIH) — Alzheimer’s: Changes in Behavior & Communication
- National Institute on Aging (NIH) — Coping With Agitation, Aggression, and Sundowning
- Teepa Snow — Positive Approach to Care — Positive Physical Approach & communication
- Family Caregiver Alliance — Caregiver’s Guide to Understanding Dementia Behaviors
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