New to Best Friends? Our introductory training will get you familiar with the approach!
- Date:August 26, 2025
- Time:2:30–4:30 EST
- Registration Fee:$75 per person
- Registration deadline:August 19, 2025
Learn how you can make people with dementia feel safe, secure, and valued by following the acclaimed Best Friends™ approach to care. This relationship-centered care model is easy to understand and brings out the best in people with dementia – and also in staff. Not only will your residents or clients benefit, but you will see how activities, mealtimes, and personal care go more smoothly and your days are more enjoyable.
This virtual training program introduces the core elements of the life-affirming Best Friends™ approach in 2 hours of interactive learning. The training is led by a Best Friends™ Expert Leader, who is either the model’s founder or a long-time practitioner and trainer of this life-affirming approach.
Participants will learn how to
- Embrace friendship to ease the dementia experience
- Use each person’s life story
- Communicate skillfully
- Understand and minimize behaviors that challenge us
- Provide meaningful engagement
- Develop the Best Friends Knack of Caregiving
The Best Friends approach is valuable to anyone working with people who live with memory loss. This includes home care settings, adult day services, assisted living, skilled nursing, acute care, and hospice. It is effective for nursing staff, activity professionals, social workers, care managers, administrators, and frontline caregivers.
Give yourself or your team the indispensable skills of a Best Friends caregiver in this lively, Zoom-based training program.
Trainer
Wendy Schrag, RN-BC
Board certified in Geriatrics and educated in nursing, behavioral science, and long-term care management, Wendy Schrag is highly qualified for her longtime work with people living with dementia. She is Vice President of Clinical Services for Touchmark, a provider of multi-level senior housing that includes dedicated memory care on its 13 campuses across 9 northwestern states plus Canada. Certified as a Master Trainer in 2013, Wendy was instrumental in designing and implementing programs to train Touchmark staff in the Best Friends approach. Progressing from Memory Care Manager for just one community to Memory Care Support Manager for the entire organization, she provided guidance and education on person-centered care and Best Friends™ practices to nurses and other care staff at all Touchmark communities before assuming her current responsibilities.
Wendy also gives informational presentations to the public on issues relating to dementia and is trained as an Alzheimer’s Association Support Group Facilitator, working with families who are caring for loved ones with Alzheimer’s disease or other age-related dementia.
