“DARE– Domiciliary Assistance REvisited through Integrated Services” ” project favours the reflection on a particular aspect of the European welfare: the services for domiciliary assistance. The need of an innovative approach in this sector is justified by the obvious lack of economic public resources dedicated, almost all over Europe, and by the significant changes that characterize the families – main actors of the assistance and the domiciliary care system. The project partners share the need to collaborate in order to improve the services/helpdesks/centres already active with a holistic approach (services for dependent people, but also for domestic management, after school, ecc.) and to acquire the competences needed to propose innovative models on its own territory. Therefore, the main objective of the project is the creation, through the partnership, of an influent community of practice able to propose and to transfer, in a long term view, innovative alternatives of home assistance systems, over passing the traditional division of the socio-sanitary services based on target-groups – disabled adults, disabled minors, elders, by observing, during the exchanges of good practices (through 5 transnational meetings): - the PROFESSIONAL AND RELATIONAL COMPETENCES OF THE STAFF INVOLVED in the helpdesks/centres of integrated services - the TRAINING/CONTINUOUS RIQUALIFICATION services put in place in order to adapt the professional profiles and the (formal and informal) competences of the involved staff. Through the continuous dissemination, another objective of the project is to influence the local/national/European stakeholders regarding the need to re-design and re-think the system of home assistance in an integrated manner. The project involves 5 European countries – Italy, France, Belgium, Romania and Portugal, and it is coordinated by Fondazione IPRPEA from Padua, a historical organization active mainly in the field of training and management of services for disabled persons. The Italian partnership has a second partner, Associazione C’entro, whose mission if the promotion of innovative welfare (in the socio-sanitary and vocational training sector). Belgium is represented by Eurocarers, the European network supporting carers and care activities, and Service d’Aide aux Seniors bruxellois Asbl, active in Bruxelles as an integrated and structured services for home assistance. Another example of active centre of integrated services for home assitance is represented by the French partner Coopérative pour le Développement de l'Emploi dans les Services A la Personne en Corse. The Portuguese partner, APCC - Associacao de Paralisia Cerebral de Coimbra IPSS contributes to the partnership with its competences linked to the vocational training and to the integrated rehabilitation of the disabled persons. Directia Generala de Asistenta Sociala si protectia Copilului Sector 1, Bucuresti, is a Romanian public institution who manages different types of residential and domiciliary assistance. The main activities of the project are: - exchange of good practices through 5 transnational meetings - Analysis of the best practices observed - continuous dissemination of the activities and the results - periodical monitoring and evaluation The methodology is focused on the coordination done by Fondazione IRPEA in collaboration with the Steering Committee of the project, both for the content and the organizational aspects, facilitated by the continuous communication between the partners and the active dissemination at all levels. The project envisages direct results, mostly on the specialized staff participating to the transnational meetings, in terms of improvement of the competences and the knowledge regarding the management of integrated services for domiciliary assistance, the requested professional profiles, the methodologies for the training/up dating the staff and the diversification of the services. The Analysis of the best practices will become a resource of the partner organizations favouring the dissemination at the local level of the services innovation idea; it will be done in English, an easy tool used to promote a debate among the national and European stakeholder. An immediate impact will be evident inside each partner organization, which will become the main actors of a paradigm change, able to reflect in a critical manner on the on their own ways and models of management for the domiciliary assistance services. On the long term, the project “DARE” is ambitious but necessary, made of concrete opening of unique helpdesks/centres for the domiciliary assistance on the territories where similar initiatives do not exist yet, and of diversifying the types of services and the qualified professional profiles in the contexts where there active models already exist.
The project had a partnership made of 5 European countries Italy, France, Belgium, Romania and Portugal, and had Fondazione IRPEA from Padua, Italy, as coordinator. The focus of the “DARE” pathway were the services for home assistance as central element to be reformed in the wider context of the assistance to the person, a choice motivated by the conviction that the support the persons in difficulty and their carers might receive at home influences their right to be cared at home, avoiding also the recoveries in residential structures, already not enough compared to the number of requests. The perspective of a change of paradigm in this sector, focused on the a holistic approach regarding the needs and the resources, was confirmed during the whole project. Starting from the obvious lack of dedicated public resources, in most of the European countries, and from the deep changes appeared in the modern families, the project facilitated the approach to very diversified initiatives. The 5 visits for the exchange of best practices – to Bucharest, Brussel, Bastia, Coimbra and Padua – involved 106 available places – but some of the professionals participated to more than one visit. The two internal Focus Groups (in Bucharest and Padua), the Final Workshop (Padua) and the intense exchanges via e-mail between the project coordinators of each partner confirmed that the objective of creating a “community of practice” had been reached: the group will continue to pay attention to the innovation in the sector of home and residential care and will search for opportunities of building projects centered on the transfer of best practices, perhaps also enlarging the partnership to other countries. The diversity of the professional profiles involved was another objective reached (directors and coordinators of organizations associated to the partners, professional educators, healthcare technicians, home assistants, responsible for the communication, occupational therapists, psychologists, physiotherapists, experts from the planning department). In terms of direct impact, the opportunity to participate to one or more visits facilitated a training “on the field” and contributed to the widening of their vision on the utility and the functioning of integrated services, which also imply the rethinking of the necessary competences. Besides, the direct contact with different cultures of approaching care and cure gave them the elements of a necessary intercultural approach. As it emerged from the Observation Form of the Best Practices, filled in by each partner after each visit, TRAINING and CONTINUOUS REQUALIFICATION of the professionals from the different home assistance services, are essential in order to educate them to the vision of the integration of interventions/services meant to improve the quality of life of the assisted persons and to favor the social inclusion process of the disadvantaged persons. Through the continuous dissemination activity, around 36.000 persons were reached, a public made mainly of experts from the third sector at the national and European level, local/national/European stakeholders, professionals from the healthcare and education sector, public institutions. The partnership had started from an initial situation of differentiation both due to the type of organization and to the integration level of the existing services. According to the options expressed by the partners during the final Focus Group, the model of the “integrated desks/CARE HUBS” remains the ideal one needed for a real innovation of the assistance services (domiciliary and non), even if differentiated according to the culture and to the existing legislation of each country. The collection of the 26 best practices in a e-book (available in EPUB and PDF format) allowed a deeper reflection on the models and initiatives observed and the collection of the organizations and the territories involved. The partnership followed the double meaning of the word “DARE”: “to donate”, in Italian, and therefore aim at the quality of life of the persons for whom, as professionals, we are responsible, and “to dare”, in English, as a really sustainable welfare allover Europe, homogenous in terms of quality and quantity, cannot be possible without OVERCOMING the traditional division of the assistance and care services based on “target groups”. Being convinced that that innovation is possible event with small (but strategic) steps, the idea of foreseeing, on more territories, the creation of Integrated Desks for care and assistance (not only domiciliary one) remains an objective to be carried on. The “DARE” project helped the partners also in facing the real dimensions of the needed changes in order to reach, even partly, this objective.