“Training and further Education in Care and Social Services” (TECS) is a best practice exchange project in the area of vocational further education in the social services sector, with a focus on staff in care in the widest sense (elderly care, support for people with disabilities, child care, and auxiliary services such as home emergency call systems). As this is a sector with high labour mobility within the EU and wider Europe, an international exchange on the challenges faced by providers of such services is of particular interest. Nine non-governmental organisations operating in social services from Central and Eastern Europe (eight from Erasmus+ program countries, two associated partners from neighbouring countries, one coordinating organisation) and their coordinating network organisation Samaritan International are coming together to conduct this exchange. All operative organisations will send personnel involved in staff training to eight transnational meetings in total – one hosted by each operative partner based in a program country. Each meeting will allow the host organisation to showcase the best practice there are contributing to the project on-site. The lessons-learned from the project will contribute to the quality of further education in all participating organisations, as new insights are integrated into their educational concepts in the follow-up of the project. In addition to this primary objective focused on educational best practices, the transnational meetings will also be used to discuss current issues in EU policy that concern the social services sector. The secondary objective to be achieved by this is a strengthened sense of being part of a European civil society for the participating organisations and an improved ability to articulate oneself and contribute to European politics and European democracy – as individual persons, individual organisations and as a voice for the vulnerable groups that are in the care of social services NGOs.
The main goal of the TECS project was the exchange of knowledge in the field of training in the social services, particularly care, sector, while showcasing relevant social services. As a secondary goal, issues of European social policy were discussed as well. Also, the project partners wanted to use the project to build up a lasting network to also help each other and to exchange knowledge in the future.
The care sector is on of the most crucial sectors in the social economy of Europe. Due to the demographic change the need for qualified personnel will further increase in the years to come and cannot even be satisfied nowadays. The partner organizations of the TECS project are all active in either care or other relevant social services affected by demographic and social change. The need of the project was to learn about the different approaches in the participating European countries to address these challenges, in the services themselves but especially by means of staff training, staff motivation and retainment.