Improving communication, intercultural and social skills for foreigners and migrants who work as caregivers of elderly people in Europe Erasmus Project

Project Title

Improving communication, intercultural and social skills for foreigners and migrants who work as caregivers of elderly people in Europe

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 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Health and wellbeing; Migrants’ issues; Open and distance learning

Project Summary

Population ageing is a long-term trend. The EU-28’s old-age dependency ratio is projected to increase from 28.8 % in 2015 to 51.0 % by 2080 (Eurostat, June 2016).

Providing long-term care in home is proving to be a viable and cost effective alternative to institutional care. Due to the increasing numbers of older adults and the demand for the home direct-care workers all over Europe, there is a current and, possible, future shortage of trained caregivers.

In many EU Member States, migrants are filling this labour gap, providing essential care services. Migrant elderly caregivers are dealing with important challenges of inadequate education and training, low wages, minimal worker benefits, lack of career advancement opportunities, and erratic and often part-time employment.

The lack of adequate training for elderly caregivers remains a major gap in workforce development.

The project ” Improving communication, intercultural and social skills for EU and non-EU migrants who work as caregivers of elderly people in Europe” aimed to fill the gap in the training of elderly care givers , to empower migrant employees in home care for elders and potential newcomers , to enhance their opportunities for job, strength their position on the labour market and career advancement and increase quality of care for elderly people in participating countries and in Europe.

The project addresses elderly caregivers, with different professional qualifications and level of education: personal care aides, certified nurse aides, nursing assistants, nurse aides, personal care attendants, direct care givers, direct care workers, home caregivers, home health aides, geriatric care specialist and geriatric nursing assistants with focus on migrant caregivers.

The project started with the review of the national and international literature, job analyses, occupational standards, continuing professional development courses, related to migrant and foreign workers caring for older people, conducted in UK, Romania, Italy and Spain.

Based on this research and on the PPT/IENE model, a new and innovative Training Model and a Training Curriculum aiming to improve the effectiveness training of different categories of elderly caregivers were created.

Then, partners collected from Internet training/learning/evaluation materials in CC license relating to the modules and topics, adapted to the target groups and posted them on the project website at https://iene7.eu/learning-resources/.

For each topic, the partners created a learning tool, organized in an attractive form with links to additional resources, you tube videos, animations and quizzes, which are posted on the project learning platform in the form of easy to navigate course, available in all partners’ languages at https://iene7.eu/online-course/.

The learning tools and resources were used in the development of learning activities on the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), an innovative pedagogical approach of co-learning through co-creation, based on digital integration in learning.

A number of 17 MOOC Facilitators, trainers from partner organizations and volunteers, were trained to conduct learning activities in the MOOC.

To attract potential users for the MOOC and promote the project products, four national seminars, were organized in the Romania, UK , Spain and Italy, where 150 participants learned how to use training curriculum, resources , MOOC methodology and content, to create new trainings or new MOOCs.

The MOOC was piloted with 257 participants, recruited by the partners from the target groups or from Europe and all over world and 27 trainers and facilitators conducted their learning.

The Training Model, the Curriculum , all the training and learning materials produced by the project, the MOOC methodology and content are freely available to the wide public on the project web platform and uploaded on the project website at https://iene7.eu/results.

Trainers may use the MOOC Compendium of the learning activities and the MOOC Good Practice Guide set up new MOOCs or own trainings and the Learning tools, posted on the platform, in the form of a easy to navigate course, and the learning/assessment resources can be used, for long time, by the elderly professionals and migrants elderly care givers, for individual learning. The Learning Tools are also being accessible from Smartphone and tablet.

This project contributes to improving quality in care, to encourage elderly and family in their option for care in home and reduce the financial costs for the states for long-term care services for elderly and may also impact systems or policies in participating countries and in Europe, by inspiring changes in the national occupational standards for elderly caregivers and in training curricula

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 158540,26 Eur

Project Coordinator

Asociatia EDUNET & Country: RO

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI CATANIA
• EAS28 – Comune di Ortona
• UNIVERSIDAD DE ALMERIA
• MIDDLESEX UNIVERSITY HIGHER EDUCATION CORPORATION