The largest cause of sensory impairments is the ageing process with over 60s. Rising life expectancy and increasing numbers of older people in the population in Europe means a growing number of individuals are affected by visual and hearing impairments. Thus, raising general awareness of problems and potential solutions is essential to maximising individual quality of life and minimising social isolation. A key challenge related to the quality of life of older people with impairments is the training and skills of the professionals working in care services addressed for this specific target group. Many of the organisations participating in SENSNET are members of any of the European networks ENVITER and HIPEN that are supporting the project and that represent organisations of professionals and experts in sensory impairments in 21 EU countries. Through surveys, events, workshops and their daily work both European networks and the partners in SENSNET have collected information about the concrete learning needs of the professionals working with ageing people with sensory impairments.The main SENSNET activities are, among others:- Design of the Methodological guide for the learning programme- Development of the training materials for professionals working with ageing people with hearing and/or visual impairments will be created in such area as, lighting and ergonomics and accessibility in society and in the daily life (access to culture and access to information and communication media)- Creation of online learning platform for professionals working with ageing people with hearing and visual impairments.- Training courses for professionals.- Organisation of two multiplier events in Hungary and Poland.The project will apply innovative approaches of the learning methodology, such as:- Demand-driven training. Based on the bottom-up approach to identify the training needs of the target groups, the partners will extract information that will be used for developing tailored training modules using a problem-solving approach.- Collaborative tutorship. Once students have finished the learning and mentorship phase they will become mentors of other students through a direct contact using the social community. - Co-creation and open innovation. The project will create a learning social community to foster the collaboration between learners, teachers and mentors.The most important results of the project are: 1) Creation of the European Academy that provides training for professionals working with ageing people with visual and/or hearing impairments, 2) Creation of a European learning community of professionals working with ageing people with visual and/or hearing impairments, 3) Increased the knowledge base of the partners to have a more accurate awareness of professionals’ learning needs and priorities, 4) Improved skills of professionals involved in the trainings, 5) Creation a comprehensive training strategy for professionals working with ageing people with hearing and visual impairments, etc.The project involves seven partners from six different European countries: Spain, France, The Netherlands, Italy, Bulgaria and United Kingdom. Members of the consortium have vast experience and expertise in visual and hearing impairments area and work daily with ageing people.The main target group of the project are workers at day care centres for older people, geriatric social workers, care workers for seniors, therapists for seniors, GPs, nurses, home-visiting care workers and other professionals that provide services to support ageing people with sensory impairments. The expected impact on the target groups is to improve their occupational qualification and professional skills in sensory impairments area, especially related to hearing and visual problems. All of them will be a part of European learning community of professionals working with ageing people with visual and/or hearing impairments. The final beneficiaries are ageing people over 60 with visual and/or hearing impairments. SENSNET will focus not only on older people with severe impairments, but it will address all the ageing population, whatever the severity of sensory impairment, but for whom the sensory impairment is becoming a problem in daily life, for the autonomy and the quality of life. Due to the SENSNET project, ageing people with sensory impairments will be able to use better qualify services provided by professionals mentioned above.As a long term benefits can be mentioned, among others, the creation of the European Academy that provide training for professionals working with ageing people with visual and/or hearing impairments and creation of the European learning community of these professionals.
The largest cause of sensory impairments is the ageing process with over 60. Rising life expectancy and increasing numbers of older people in the population in Europe means a growing number of individuals are affected by visual and hearing impairments. Thus, raising general awareness of problems and potential solutions is essential to maximising individual quality of life and minimising social isolation. A key challenge related to the quality of life of older people with sensorial impairments is the adequate training of the professionals working in care services addressed for this specific target group. Through surveys, events, workshops and daily work ENVITER and HIPEN (European networks representing organisations of professionals and experts in sensory impairments from 21 EU countries) collected information about the concrete learning needs of the professionals working with ageing people with sensory impairments. Based on this knowledge, 7 entities from these EU networks launched the SENSNET project with the aim of creating a European Academy that designed, developed, collected, tested and valorised innovative approaches and contents tailored to the specific needs of professionals that work with ageing people with sensory impairments. The main activities within the SENSNET project were as follows: - Design of the methodological guide for the learning programme - Development of the training materials for professionals working with ageing people with hearing and/or visual impairments in the areas such as, lighting and ergonomics and accessibility in society and in the daily life (access to culture and access to information and communication media) - Creation of an online learning platform for professionals working with ageing people with hearing and visual impairments - Development of training courses for professionals - Organisation of two multiplier events in Germany and France The most important results achieved within the SENSNET project are: 1) Creation of the European Academy that provides training for professionals working with ageing people with visual and/or hearing impairments (SENSNET-EASI platform), 2) Creation of a European learning community of professionals working with ageing people with visual and/or hearing impairments, 3) Increased the knowledge base of the partners to have a more accurate awareness of professionals’ learning needs and priorities, 4) Improved skills of professionals involved in two rounds of the training course, 5) Creation of a comprehensive training strategy for professionals working with ageing people with hearing and visual impairments 6) Increased awareness on the importance of the training of the professionals working with ageing people with visual and/or hearing impairments at national (Spain, France, The Netherlands, Italy, Bulgaria, Greece and United Kingdom) and European levels. The main target group of the project are workers at day care centres for older people, geriatric social workers, care workers for seniors, therapists for seniors, GPs, nurses, home-visiting care workers and other professionals that provide services to support ageing people with sensory impairments. Through the SENSNET activities these target groups have improved their occupational qualification and professional skills in the area of sensory impairments, especially related to hearing and visual problems. By participating in the SENSNET courses all of them became part of a European learning community of professionals working with ageing people with visual and/or hearing impairments and will be informed on the further training to be developed by ENVITER (European Network for Vision Impairment Training Education & Research) and HIPEN (European Network for Professionals working with People with Hearing Impairments). As long-term benefit can be mentioned, among others, the creation of the European Academy that will continue providing training for professionals working with ageing people with visual and/or hearing impairments beyond the project lifetime. To this end, the organisations belonging to the ENVITER and HIPEN networks will encourage their members to participate in the SENSNET courses that are available at the online platform sustained by the Dutch partner – Visio. Also it has to be emphasised that ENVITER has expressed the importance of and their interest in making sure that the efforts in the SENSNET Project will be taken further and will be made sustainable with support of the network. Finally, it is relevant to mention that the final beneficiaries of the SENSNET project are ageing people over 60 with visual and/or hearing impairments. Due to the SENSNET project, ageing people with sensory impairments will be able to use better qualify services provided by professionals who have carried out the tailored trainings.