There are over 3,6 million employed in cleaning in Europe. Added to the common hazards faced by cleaners (noise, vibration, slipping, musculoskeletal disorders, stress from long working hours, cleaners in healthcare facilities face additional hazards),there is possible exposure to micro-organisms, blood-borne pathogens, contact with animals and their waste, and infections from salmonella or campylobacter. Evidence has been given by the European Agency for Safety and Health that an increase of infection from noroviruses among cleaning staff for lack of proper training and risk awareness.In many European countries, cleaning trade suffers a poor image and is depreciated. There is need to raise awareness about their part in the healthcare chain. In addition, because of different shifts, early working hours, heavy schedules, it is very difficult for managers to organize group training sesssions in order to train hospital cleaners and get skilled workers performing high quality cleaning in order to avoid the spreading of viruses. The implementation of blended pathways or e-learning training pathway can be a way to ease the upskilling of workers. The H.I.T. project forms a consortium of 7 full partners including 4 vocational schools (initial and ongoing training), a management authority, 1 hospital, 1 cleaning company as well as 3 associate partners (three hospitals) whose aim is :- to enhance the quality and relevance of the learning offer, developing new and innovative approaches and tools and support the dissemination of best practices within the health care industry.- raise the awareness of the importance of cleaners’role in the hygiene chain- enhance the competencies and knowledge of cleaners (as well as VET learners)by designing a promotion video and e-learning didactic materials in order to facilitate an easy access to training on the working place but also to widen the range of tools used in VET schools. The e-learning and interactive materials devised will be as visual as possible to facilitate the acquisition of skills, knowledge and competences to a large audience including non-native speakers, dyslexics, learners with learning difficulties ...The project relies on a strong cooperation between training providers and cleaning professionnals ; they have the common goal of delivering the required competencies to hospital cleaners so as to meet hospitals needs namely avoiding the spreading and contagion of diseases, perform high quality cleaning.
This project has built upon the work undertaken with a previous Erasmus + project named "Cleaning in Healthcare" whose goal was to design a competences framework for service assistant in hospitals. The same partners took part in this previous project and in HIT project. Considering the results of CIH, it seemed obvious to partners to work together again in order to devise materials to promote this trade as well as educational materials to facilitate the implementation of the pathway they had designed. More, educational policies of partner countries hightlight the importance of the use of digital tools in vocational training, thus the idea to design digital educational tools to train service assistants. The need for this project is to bridge the skills gap of service assistants with the aim of avoiding the spreading of nosocomial diseases and offer a customized and flexible training offer for hospital cleaners. HIT project aims at creating promotion tools to inspire people into cleaning jobs which are experiencing labour shortages ;toffering digital training tools to foster flexitbility in training pathways (notably with different shifts), an easy access to training. The partnership is made up of 7 partners from 4 different countries : Estonia, Denmark, Finland and France. Three Finnish partners used ot working together in Kouvola municipality : a vocational training centre called KSAO and two organisations Kastek and Carea in charge of human ressources and cleaning staff in hospitals. In Estonia, two partners are committed into the project : Jarvama County Vocational school which is the school which contributed to the creation of the competences framework and is the lonely school delivering the hospital cleaner training in EStonia, and a training centre for adults expert in cleaning techniques. In Denmark, a vocational training centre is involved (initial and ongoing education) and in France, the coordinator is GIP-FCIP de l'académie de Caen which closely works with the National Education network for adult education and also with VET schools of the region. The main activities undertaken during the project are intellectual outputs : - a video to promote the cleaning trades in 5 languages : value the importance of the tasks carried out by hospital cleaners in the hygiene chain to avoid the spreading of nosocomial diseases and value the professional techniques. - an e-assessment tool in 5 languages. It is based upon the competences framework devised with the previous project CIH. It is proposed with guidelines in order to determine the competences and knowledge to bridge for each learner. - a mobile app made up 5 mini-games so as to train people to basic gestures, techniques and knowledge to ensure a high standard quality cleaning. These games are very visual to foster learning by migrants with very few knowledge of the hosting country. - an educational guide in 5 languages to ease the implementation of the digital tools developed during the lifespan of the project. In each country of the partnership, tools have been experimented by professionals (either cleaning or training professionals) and also learners. A report has been written about this experimentation phase. At first, the partnership had targeted 60 people for the experimentation and finally, 158 people took part in it and gave their feedback so that we could improve the tools. Four multiplier events were organized to promote the results of the project: one per country. The quality of the results have been highlighted by cleaning professionals during the experimentation as well as by training providers. They underlined the easy access to the tools and the ease-of-use. Partners are going to include them into their professional practices and training offer. The organization of events has been the opportunity to improve the relationship between training providers and professionals : cleaning companies, hospitals, professional associations, guidance centres .... which could work together and contribute to the promotion of the trade. Another positive aspect is the inclusion of digital tools into this type of training, very few digital tools are developed in this sector.