No / In this paper we will discuss the current tensions that exist between UK anti-discrimination legislation and the professional and statutory regulatory bodies (PSRBs) that govern registration of health and social care practitioners in the United Kingdom. The tensions arise from aspirations for a work force that reflects the wider community and the need to safeguard patient safety. We present an overview of the relevant legislation and the requirements of the main health and social care professional statutory and regulating bodies, whose overall aim is safeguarding the general public. Four individual case studies, which have drawn on qualitative and quantitative data to explore some of the ensuing challenges and seek resolutions, are discussed and their outcomes synthesised to make recommendations. Conducting research with disabled participants requires specific considerations; we reflect on these in this paper and discuss our experiential learning.

yes / Although training and workforce development are high on the policy agenda at present (eg DoH 2009), there has been less progress in thinking about the kind of education that might be needed in order to provide dementia care that is genuinely person-centred. A continuing obstacle here is the tendency to assume that people who have dementia are to be understood ¿ as a group ¿ by virtue of their shared diagnosis rather than by their lived experience, in which diagnosis is an interruption rather than the whole story. Three approaches to overcoming this obstacle that I will discuss below are arts-based learning, teaching social history awareness, and increasing the involvement of the ¿experts by experience¿, people with dementia themselves.