SquarePeg Training Learning Disability and Dementia

Learning disability and dementia training for professionals

Changing the shape of support

About SquarePeg Training

SquarePeg Training is a training company, a social enterprise, led by Karen Watchman alongside advisors with a learning disability who share their own experiences about ageing and dementia to inform training content. Profit supports the ongoing involvement of people with a learning disability and subsidises training for family members and students.

This one-day course is available online or in-person. To find out more about booking as an individual, or as an organisation for up to 20 staff, please visit the booking page

The aim of the SquarePeg learning disability and dementia course is to enable professionals working in health, social care, social work, allied health and third sector organisations to create a cultural shift that avoids 'reinventing the wheel' with each diagnosis of dementia. This not only responds to the individual needs of people ageing with a learning disability and dementia, it supports a multidisciplinary approach and enables organisations to address regulatory requirements and implementation of national dementia strategy priorities.

You can also connect with us on Bluesky squarepegtraining.bsky.social

Award Winning

SquarePeg Training was runner up in the Forth Valley HEAT (Highlighting Entrepreneurship All Together) 2024 competition, supported by Business Gateway. This was for businesses trading for less than two years and involved 25 companies delivering a Dragon's Den style pitch to local entrepreneurs.

About the Trainer

Drawing on her experience as a former Chief Executive of Down's Syndrome Scotland where she first worked alongside people with Down's syndrome, Karen Watchman developed the first UK course on learning disability and dementia in the UK in the 1990s. Since then, she has continued to deliver award-winning and internationally recognised training for health and social care staff on learning disability and dementia. She is an advisor to Alzheimer Europe and a member of the international committee of the National Task Group (NTG) on Intellectual Disabilities and Dementia Practices, USA. She is a peer reviewer for the WHO Global Dementia Observatory Knowledge Exchange Platform and whilst working at Alzheimer's Disease International, edited the World Alzheimer's Report, 2021 and wrote Plan to Impact IV monitoring the progress of the WHO Global action plan on the public health response to dementia 2017-2025.

Karen Watchman is also part-time Professor of Ageing, Frailty and Dementia at the University of Stirling, Scotland, UK

Training and Resources

Instead of seeing someone with a learning disability and dementia as a square peg to be squeezed into a round hole, we need to change the shape of the hole.