For residential care homes
Your residents grew up before ADHD had a name, so almost none of them were ever assessed, let alone diagnosed. Yet the evidence increasingly links ADHD to dementia, which means they are now living in your home, with their lifelong traits mistaken for decline or written up as challenging behaviour. How do you offer person-centred care to someone who does not think the way your care plan assumes? Start by finding out who they really are.
Recent large cohort studies report that adults with ADHD face around three times the risk of developing dementia, with untreated ADHD carrying the greatest risk.
Emerging research; associations, not certainties.
Standard ADHD screening tools designed for older adults in residential care. Existing tools were built for younger adults and miss the internalised presentation common in older women.
Domains in the ADHDementia screening framework, from sensory sensitivity and time blindness to lifelong masking, built specifically for later life and care settings.
The lost generation
Today's care home residents grew up in the mid twentieth century, when a child who could not concentrate was "lazy", a woman who felt everything too deeply was "highly strung", and a lifetime of lost keys, unfinished projects and abandoned careers was simply a difficult personality. ADHD assessment did not exist for them. Diagnosis was never on the table.
That generation is now entering dementia care in growing numbers, and the evidence increasingly suggests that people with ADHD, particularly untreated ADHD, are far more likely to develop dementia. Yet almost none of them carry a diagnosis, so their ADHD is invisible to the people caring for them. The resident who refuses to wear her cardigan may be in genuine sensory pain. The gentleman who argues about every request may simply need to know why. The woman who seems a different person by teatime may be exhausted from seventy years of masking.
Take one small, everyday example: object permanence. For many people with ADHD, out of sight genuinely is out of mind, so a lifetime of coping means leaving things out on view as visual anchors: the tablets by the kettle, tomorrow's letter on the chair, the glasses on the windowsill. Then they move into a care home, and the housekeeper kindly tidies everything away. The room looks lovely. The resident is now lost in it. And what looks like their dementia getting worse is actually a fifty-year coping system dismantled in an afternoon.
Founder Kerry Billson has seen this from both sides. Kerry has ADHD, and years of working in a care home meant watching residents whose personalities felt instantly familiar being cared for in an entirely neurotypical way. It caused problems every day, and some of those residents ended up on medication to calm them down, when what they actually needed was care that fitted the way their minds work. That experience became the question at the heart of Kerry's doctoral research with the University of Worcester, titled "A Square Peg in a Round Home": what happens when the home does not fit the person, and how do we reshape care plans and environments so that it does?
ADHDementia exists to make that invisible population visible. It gives care providers and families three things: a screening tool that reveals lifelong ADHD traits, training that turns that insight into everyday practice, and consultancy to embed it across whole organisations.
What you will find here
A structured, non-diagnostic screening built on nine domains of lifelong ADHD traits, with a self-report version and an observational version for staff and families. Every screening produces a Neurodivergent Life Profile with practical care adjustments.
Try the toolA care plan records what is done to a person. The Personhood Profile records who they are. Working life, music that reaches them, dates that matter, what helps and what makes things worse, distilled into a one page care card for the bedroom door. Free for families, £49 a month for a home.
See the profileLive training for care staff, on site or online, plus consultancy for managers and groups who want to embed ADHD-aware dementia care across their organisation. Practical, evidence-informed and unlike anything else on the market.
See the optionsFree research summaries and insights on ADHD in later life, the ADHD and dementia connection, and what person-centred care really looks like for neurodivergent older adults.
Read the blogDownloadable, practical guides for care teams and families, from sensory-friendly environments to care plan templates that reframe "challenging behaviour" as unmet neurodivergent need.
Browse the guidesRegulation and compliance
Since 1 July 2022, the Health and Care Act 2022 has required every CQC-registered health and social care provider to ensure that each member of staff receives training in learning disability and autism, at a level appropriate to their role. This is enforced under Regulation 18: Staffing.
From 6 September 2025, the Oliver McGowan Code of Practice raised the bar further. Training must now meet four specific standards: a minimum curriculum, live interactive delivery, co-production with people with lived experience, and evidence-based quality assurance. The CQC uses this Code when assessing whether providers are compliant.
An honest note: the legislation names autism and learning disability specifically, not ADHD. But the CQC's broader guidance speaks of neurodivergent people, and ADHD sits squarely under that umbrella. The Oliver McGowan requirement creates the legal floor. ADHDementia training is the specialist layer above it: it addresses ADHD traits in older adults and dementia care directly, which standard mandatory training does not cover. Providers who can show they understand the neurodivergent people in their care, not just the categories named in statute, are in a far stronger position when inspectors ask how person-centred their care really is.
How it works
Use the screening tool with a resident, or reflect on their life history with the observational version. In minutes you have a Neurodivergent Life Profile showing which ADHD-associated traits are strongly present.
The profile explains what each trait means in a care setting: why the dining room causes distress, why "non-compliance" disappears when you explain the reason, why afternoons are harder than mornings.
Book training for your team, or consultancy for your group, and turn those insights into care plans, environments and daily practice that genuinely fit the person. Watch the "challenging behaviour" fall away.
New
Her notes say "pleasant, compliant, requires assistance with personal care". Nobody on shift this evening knows the rest. The Personhood Profile exists so that they do, and so that a person can write it themselves long before anyone has to guess on their behalf.
Free for the person and their family, always. For a care home it is £49 a month whatever your size, with a fortnight free first and no card. Everything stays on your own device: we hold no copy and could not read a profile if we wanted to. It sits alongside your statutory care plan rather than replacing any part of it.
The screening tool is free to use, with no sign-up and no card. One screening may change how you understand someone for good, and what you learn about one resident tends to change how you see the rest.