Family Caregiver Support – Strategies and Tools to Promote Caregivers’ Mental and Emotional Health Erasmus Project

Project Title

Family Caregiver Support – Strategies and Tools to Promote Caregivers’ Mental and Emotional Health

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Migrants’ issues; Health and wellbeing; Disabilities – special needs

Project Summary

Mental disorders are highly prevalent in Europe and impose a major burden on individuals, society and the economy. Family caregivers play a central role in the care of persons with severe mental illness. The majority of caregivers live with the illness of their affected relative 24 hours of the day, each day of the year, and they spend, according to a survey, an average of 6 to 9 hours per day providing care. Despite their important role, caregivers frequently feel undervalued by the health care system. Research shows that family members who provide care to individuals with chronic or disabling mental conditions are themselves at risk. Emotional, mental, and physical health problems arise from complex caregiving situations and the strains of caring for frail or disabled relatives.

In most EU countries the support of family caregivers concerns mostly financial and insurance aspects. Apart from information in monetary or insurance matters, family members are left alone without the possibility to get instant access for social and psychological support.

Therefore, the overall objective of this project was to empower family members as caregivers and to give them instant and easy-to-understand access not only to relevant medical information, but also to psychological support for their own needs, and to give them self-confidence and patients competence in their caring for family members with mental illness.

We developed a Guide and a Resource Pack to support caregivers. The Guide provides secure quality information, support, and resources for family caregivers of patients with chronic mental diseases and cognitive conditions for the following mental disorders:
• Dementia and Alzheimer
• Substance abuse
• Schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders
• Depression and bipolar disorder
• Post-traumatic stress disorder
• Intellectual disabilities
• ADHD
• Autism
• Eating disorders

The Family Caregivers Support Resource Pack has been designed as interactive e-learning course. Each of the nine modules consists of various units for each of the above mentioned disorders:
• Understanding the disorder
• Concerns of the caregiver
• Role of nutrition
• Activities for the caregiver
• Activities for the care receiver

These contents are available at the e-learning platform in the languages of the partnership (English, German, Italian. Greek, Portuguese, Croatian, Slovak, Slovene) and also in Arabic and Pashtun. In this way, the project reaches also refugees, asylum seekers and migrants who have no or only little command of the host country’s language. Moreover, access to the Resource Pack is also possible through a multilingual mobile app.

The primary target groups for our project are adults who are caring for a family member with mental disease. The secondary target group have been people working in health and social care organisations who can inform family caregivers about the existence of our Guidelines and Resource Pack or use the materials in their information and counselling activities. Also refugee and migrant counsellors belonged to this target group, as they can disseminate the materials among their clients. The stakeholders were the key actors in public health care and institutions dealing with migrants and the integration of refugees.

During the lifetime of the project, i.e. from November 2018 until December 2020, the consortium organised more than 400 dissemination activities. More than 90,000 people were reached through online dissemination activities, while almost 5,000 people received printed project material, and more than 2,500 persons were reached in face-to face meetings or lectures. In addition, the project was presented at exhibitions or fairs with a total of 64,000 visitors. Two newspapers reported about the Family Caregiver Support project, with a total of more than 650,000 readers.

Project Website

https://www.family-caregiver-support.eu/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 288503,01 Eur

Project Coordinator

E-C-C VEREIN FUR INTERDISZIPLINARE BILDUNG UND BERATUNG EDUCATION-CULTURE-CITZENSHIP & Country: AT

Project Partners

• NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND GALWAY
• INTEGRA INSTITUT INSTITUT ZA RAZVOJ CLOVEKOVIH POTENCIALOV VELENJE
• SVEUCILISTE U RIJECI, MEDICINSKI FAKULTET
• UNIVERSITA TELEMATICA DEGLI STUDI IUL
• INSTITUTO POLITECNICO DO PORTO
• CSI CENTER FOR SOCIAL INNOVATION LTD
• QUALED obcianske zdruzenie pre kvalifikáciu a vzdelávanje