Summary: Applications are now open for hospital and care home services to join the reducing stress and distress improvement programme. This programme is a collaboration between:
- Healthcare Improvement Scotland
- the Care Inspectorate
- NHS Education for Scotland
Joining criteria
The programme is open to any registered care homes with a grade of 3 and above (grade of adequate, good, very good or excellent) and NHSScotland hospital wards interested in using quality improvement to improve an aspect of their service to better support people living with dementia who experience stress and distress.
Teams must also fulfil the following criteria.
- Be able to identify a project team, including a project lead.
- Key members of the team can commit a minimum of 2 days each month over the 12-month duration of the programme. This will be a mixture of attending all learning, coaching sessions and time to work on the project within your team.
- Commit to capturing and sharing their project information (data) over the programme duration to evidence the impact of improvement activity.
Applications
Applications should be submitted no later than 5pm, Friday 20 February 2026. The form includes guidance for each question and example answers to support your application. It will take approximately 30 minutes to complete and must be completed in one visit. Complete your application using this MS Form.
By using this form, you will be leaving our website. You will be using services provided by Microsoft who act as a data processor on behalf of NHS Scotland. Further information can be found within the MS privacy notice, terms of use and use of cookies.
You can read the questions in full on our website before completing the form.
Information sessions
We ran two MS Teams webinars about the programme on Wednesday 7 January and Monday 19 January 2026. You can watch the recording of the webinar on 7 January using this link.
Selection process
A panel will assess all applications. All applicants will be notified of the outcome in the week beginning 9 March 2026. Successful teams will be notified of allocation of their cohorts and will be expected to attend a welcome webinar on Tuesday 17 March 2026, 2–3pm on MS Teams. An appointment would be issued to you.