Handling MultiCulturality in Care Erasmus Project

Project Title

Handling MultiCulturality in Care

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 vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

The populations of Europe are rapidly ageing. Due to economic development, advances in healthcare and medicine and improved lifestyle, we have experienced a continuous increase in life expectancy during the last century. One of the consequences is a growing need for caregivers in eldercare. At the same time, the European countries are getting more multicultural and in many workplaces, the elder care staff no longer constitutes an ethnic homogeneous group but consists of employees with widely different cultural backgrounds and different norms and values. This creates challenges within a discipline where values, attitudes and communication are very important to the work environment: In nursing and caring, the staff gets very close to the person in need of care, breaking through his or her personal barriers and entering the intimate sphere. Differences in attitudes and approaches to elder care among colleagues with different ethnic backgrounds often give rise to misunderstandings and irritation in everyday life, sometimes even growing to dissociation and isolation of specific groups of staff. The European countries are lacking tools to improve elder care employees’ ability to manage multicultural workplaces and the aim of this project was to contribute to strengthening of the competences of employees in the eldercare sector in managing value systems based on different cultural backgrounds. Both with regard to inter-collegial communication and teamwork and with regard to the communication skills of the nursing staff in their contact with their clients.
Objectives:
More experience in collaboration between education and employment
Caregivers have achieved new key competences regarding their understanding of different value systems and cultural backgrounds
Caregivers have learned new methods to support their future opportunities for further training in acquisition of new key competences, including ICT competences
New teaching methods to support improvements in formal and informal vocational education are developed with employees as co-developers
A strengthened development within the care sector that rely on a broad European basis in relation to differences in cultural, organizational, economic and technological framework
Development within the care sector’s vocational training is facilitated through the transfer of knowledge and experience from other sectors
Interaction between vocational training and learning in practice in different national contexts are improved
The partnership consisted of 9 partners: From each of the countries Denmark, Italy, Germany and UK, a care organization and an educational institution participated. Besides, a Danish union representing elder care employees (the coordinating partner of the project). The partners brought into the project their experiences from care giving, training/education of caregivers, working as a union for caregivers, decision making in the field and general experience from work with multiculturality issues and dissemination. Professor Dominique Bouchet from the Department of Marketing and Management at the University of Southern Denmark was subcontracted as an expert. He has done research in cultural differences in workplaces and the training material he has developed in this field, served as inspiration for the partners in the development of their own training material targeting specifically the care sector.
The project partners developed in each of their countries training programs and training materials that were tested three times. In the periods between the training sessions, materials and programs were evaluated, adjusted and further developed. There was a mutual understanding among the partners, that training must be rooted in everyday practice to achieve maximum impact so the evaluation also included an assessment of this aspect. Working places and educational institutions cooperated closely in the development of the training. Managements and team leaders of care organizations were involved in the recruitment of staff for the activities and were consulted on how to ensure the sustainability of the results of the project. The development of the training programs in each country had a common transnational starting point, there was mutual inspiration and a high degree of synergy effect. However, the training courses ended up very differently in each country as a result of the different national contexts. We consider this as one of the strengths of this project: The products can actually be used now and in the nearest future because they meet concrete and relevant needs in each country and on top of that, they offer more than courses produced isolated in one country without benefit from cooperation with other nationalities. This is probably why not only the educational institutions and the care organizations that were the project partners but also those to whom we have disseminated information, right now are integrating the results in their activities.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 370201 Eur

Project Coordinator

FOA – LederForum & Country: DK

Project Partners

• AWO Schleswig-Holstein gGmbH
• ASP Martelli
• Pflegeeinrichtungen Steinbuck stb-care
• The St Monica Trust
• Norton Radstock College
• Giovani Valdarno Società cooperativa sociale
• RANDERS KOMMUNE