Free dementia caregiver learning
15 free dementia courses for families.
Start with whatever you're facing this week. The diagnosis and what the words mean. The driving conversation. The nights. Money and paperwork. Pain you can't see. Family who disagrees. The last stage. Fifteen courses, all free, open in any order.
Why this learning is free
Caregivers are already paying in hours. We're not going to charge for the information too.
Free Dementia caregiver course catalog
Open any course below to begin learning.
These courses don't save your place. Set aside 30 to 45 minutes, or leave the tab open if you need to stop. You can retake any course as many times as you want.
15
Free family courses
| Course | Course overview | Course link |
|---|---|---|
| Your New Role as a Caregiver | A dementia diagnosis can change how a family member sees their life, responsibilities, and relationship with someone they love. This course introduces the family caregiver role and the emotions that can come with it. Caregivers explore what the role means, what they can expect of themselves, the strengths they already bring, and the support available to them. | Open free course (opens in a new tab) |
| Making Sense of the Diagnosis - Part 1 | Part 1 gives family caregivers a clear framework for understanding the words in a dementia diagnosis. It separates the broad syndrome from the likely cause, explains common dementia-type patterns, and clarifies how stage and current abilities describe different parts of the diagnostic picture. | Open free course (opens in a new tab) |
| Making Sense of the Diagnosis - Part 2 | Part 2 deepens understanding of diagnosis language by placing symptoms in context. It compares normal aging with dementia, explains different patterns of change, clarifies diagnostic certainty and mixed causes, and corrects myths that can distort what a diagnosis does and does not mean. | Open free course (opens in a new tab) |
| Communicating After the Diagnosis | This course helps family caregivers communicate with dignity and clarity after a dementia diagnosis. Learners practice including the person in conversations, responding to denial or limited insight, giving reminders without embarrassment, and managing early disagreements. | Open free course (opens in a new tab) |
| Planning While Your Loved One Can Participate | This course helps family caregivers begin important planning conversations while a person with dementia can still participate meaningfully. Learners protect the person's voice, distinguish support from control, identify legal and financial arrangements that may need attention, prepare advance care and future living preferences, organize records, and turn unresolved questions into a usable plan. | Open free course (opens in a new tab) |
| Planning Ahead: Legal and Financial Basics | This course helps family caregivers preserve the person’s voice, distinguish assistance from legal authority, understand common planning documents, select and support trustworthy representatives, organize records, maintain transparent financial systems, respond to exploitation, plan for care costs, and prepare for qualified professional advice. | Open free course (opens in a new tab) |
| Independence, Driving, and Safety | This course helps family caregivers balance independence with protection from serious harm. Learners evaluate risk, recognize driving changes, strengthen medication and financial safeguards, assess whether living alone remains appropriate, prepare for emergencies, recognize urgent danger, and create a written safety and independence plan. | Open free course (opens in a new tab) |
| Building Your Support Network - Part 1 | This course helps family caregivers make the full caregiving workload visible, map dependable informal support, assign realistic roles, make specific requests, conduct focused family meetings, communicate with appropriate privacy, and protect the primary caregiver before the arrangement becomes unsustainable. | Open free course (opens in a new tab) |
| Building Your Support Network - Part 2 | This course helps family caregivers match needs with qualified professionals, coordinate care across settings, find and evaluate community services and respite, prepare confirmed backup caregivers, plan for caregiver emergencies, and recognize when the current support arrangement needs professional reassessment or a higher level of care. | Open free course (opens in a new tab) |
| Living Well Together | This course helps family caregivers support daily comfort, purpose, relationships, health, and identity while adapting to change. Learners choose meaningful activities, build flexible routines, protect important relationships, respond to caregiver emotions, notice when needs have changed, and create a practical living-well plan. | Open free course (opens in a new tab) |
| When a Loved One Wanders or Gets Confused at Night | This course helps family caregivers understand why wandering, exit-seeking, nighttime confusion, and sleep disruption may occur. Learners identify triggers, document patterns, reduce preventable risk, respond calmly, prepare for a missing-person emergency, protect caregiver sleep, and build a coordinated safety plan. | Open free course (opens in a new tab) |
| Recognizing Pain and Discomfort | This course helps family caregivers recognize possible pain and physical discomfort, compare changes with the person’s usual baseline, ask simple questions, document specific evidence, use approved comfort measures, communicate with the healthcare team, and recognize urgent or emergency concerns. | Open free course (opens in a new tab) |
| Caring for Yourself While Caring for Them | This course helps family caregivers protect their health and maintain a sustainable caregiving role. Learners identify the complete workload, recognize strain and safety threats, respond to grief and guilt, establish realistic boundaries, ask for specific help, use respite and professional support, and prepare for caregiver unavailability or a change in care setting. | Open free course (opens in a new tab) |
| When Family Disagrees: Working Together as a Caregiving Team | This course helps family caregivers work through disagreement while keeping the person living with dementia at the center of the care plan. Learners identify conflict mechanisms, separate facts from interpretations and emotions, clarify decision authority, assign reliable responsibilities, conduct focused family meetings, apply structured workflows to high-stakes decisions, and recognize when professional or protective support is needed. | Open free course (opens in a new tab) |
| Navigating the Final Stages with Comfort and Care | This course helps family caregivers respond to changes in speech, movement, swallowing, and daily care during final-stage dementia. Learners plan comfort-focused support and coordinate with the healthcare team as needs change. | Open free course (opens in a new tab) |
Your care makes an extraordinary difference.
Most of this work happens with nobody watching. If a course here saves you one bad night, it did its job.