IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF HOME CARE IN EUROPE Erasmus Project

Project Title

IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF HOME CARE 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 adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Disabilities – special needs; Health and wellbeing

Project Summary

One of the reasons European Union 2020 strategies exists is aging population across Europe and economic difficulties it would cause in the future. As the population ages, chronic diseases and the number of the elderly who need care increases.According to the World Health Organization two thirds of the elderly European population has one form of a chronic disease; prevalence of chronic diseases among younger age groups are also in the rise.
While the elderly, disabled and people with chronic diseases continue living at their own home most of them need informal home care.Because of the lack of knowledge and skills of the care givers the quality of life of both who need care and who provides is negatively affected.
In increasing quality of life of both two groups it is important that the care givers have sufficient knowledge, appropriate approach and necessary skill in providing care to those who need. In this context, there is not any suitable educational program which will enrich people’s adequacy in providing care as either family member or informal home care provider.
Thus, the project aimed to enhance the knowledge and skills in informal home care by integrated use of ICTs and open educational resources (OER).This project aims to create a concrete outcome, a Home Care Training Program which can be used across Europe at related public and private institutions to provide correct and adequate home care training to patients, their relatives, helpers and informal home care providers so they can provide better home care to those in need.

In this context, the following activities were performed to achieve this objective;
1) Develop and operate the Home Care Education Resource Platform
2) Develop training of trainers guidelines
3) Carry out the “home care survey” assessment in 4 project partner countries
4) Develop “Informal Home Carer Training Module and material
5) Translate training content into 4 languages
6) Conduct field trials of the “training module and materials” for evaluation and validation

Methodology used in carrying out the project;

• The project Home Care Europe OER Platform was constituted at the beginning of the project and it contains all training materials, open digital tools and project information, which was developed during the project.
• Identification of Training Needs:After the literature review, conducting WHOQOL(100-BREEF-OLD) life quality scale, survey was conducted by partners about the level and quality of home care an evaluation report was produced.
• Guideline for Trainers: was created in collaboration with the partners after the literature review.
• Training Content and Module Development:With a collaborative approach with partners, according to the needs of the target group, (the elderly, disabled and people with chronic diseases) a home care training program was created.The program had modules like communication, psychologic support, preventative care etc.
• Implementation of Home Care Europe Training,Testing,Validating and Finalization: Training modules were implemented in 4 countries and validated. After the pre-test and post test and observation during the implementation were done validating and finalization of the training program.
• Dissemination and Expositions: At the beginning of the project creating the projects blogs, social networking sites such as Facebook, twitter and was shared in all partner’s institutional web pages.Multiplier events conducted in all partner countries.

• The project’s results;
1) Home Care Europe OER Platform
2) Identification Training Needs
3) Guideline for Trainers
4) Training Content and Module Development
5) Implementation of Home Care Europe Training, testing and validating and finalisation
6) Dissemination and expositions(seminars, blogs etc.)

There were 5 partner organizations form 4 countries. One of the partners was a university, 2 of the partners were NGO, working especially with disadvantaged groups, 2 of the partners were social science research training institute, providing health care services for patients and supportive services for patient relatives too.

The project target groups were the elderly, disabled and people with chronic diseases who lived at their home and can lead half independent life, who needed home care help of some sort while living at their home; and those people called informal home care providers for them either relatives or helpers.

The project other stakeholders were the Ministries of Health, Ministries of Family and Social Policies,public and private hospitals, all members of families and at last the society. Ministries of Health, Ministries of Family and Social Policies,public and private hospitals can use Home Training Program. All target groups reached the open training tools from project OER Platform and improved their knowledge on Home Care.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 129029 Eur

Project Coordinator

GAZI UNIVERSITESI & Country: TR

Project Partners

• OSTERREICHISCHES ROTES KREUZ
• LUNARIA ASSOCIAZIONE DI PROMOZIONE SOCIALE E IMPRESA SOCIALE
• ISIS GMBH
• Türkiye Beyazay Dernegi