Population ageing is a trend which began decades ago in Europe and is to be considered a long-term process. As a consequence to these demographic changes, the EU Member States are facing an increasing demand for long-term-care in homes for dependent seniors. Hence, the demand for qualified, skilled professional carers and volunteers increases, while the labour market is tight. Education and continuous training is needed to keep up with new technologies and healthcare requirements aimed to guarantee the quality of life for the residents of care homes, taking into account the needs of their families, too. The latter often lack the knowledge of how services have to be provided to meet the special needs of dependent old persons. Collaboration and mutual understanding with the care givers is not easy. Resulting from limited resources, care homes have to draw upon a workforce with lower educational level and/or limited language proficiency (immigrants). Also volunteers have often no specific qualification. The aim of the project is to provide a training measure that • Promotes high quality standards in the care for the elder through mutual understanding, team work, knowledge sharing among co-workers, volunteers and families; • Takes scarcity of resources into consideration and is therefore provided directly by the organisations: when, where and what is needed; • Makes learning easy and complex content (quality standards in care for dependent seniors) accessible to people with a lower education level and limited language proficiency as well as to target groups with no professional background (volunteers and relatives of the seniors); • Is innovative: a game-based learning approach is chosen focusing on the contributions made by different partners with mutual benefits through sharing best practices in contents and procedures across borders. In order to achieve these objectives, organisations from Germany, Italy, Lithuania and the Netherlands will cooperate in different roles and functions. In a first step a research will be conducted that results in a compendium on standards for the quality of life of care home residents. It will reflect the state-of-the-art in theory and practice on three dimensions: 1) autonomy, 2) participation, 3) human dignity. It will include corresponding themes, criteria and indicators for the quality of life of care home residents to be conveyed in an innovative learning approach. Game-based learning is is a means apt to convey knowledge and skills in a relaxed and joyful atmosphere. An educational framework and a learning board game will be created including card decks with easy to grasp questions on the standards mentioned above. Playing the board game is a real “get together” of the different stakeholders. Getting to know each other, playing and building relationships will increase their knowledge, improve communication, mutual understanding and cooperation. Guidelines will be provided with all necessary information about how to set up, to run, to play and even tailor the game to specific needs. The first version in English will be transferred in the beta-version of an e-learning platform and be assessed during a Joint Staff Training. After the revision of the English version the tools will be translated into the partner languages. Then a trial phase with at least eight care homes, two in each country, will be performed. Based on the feedback of the stakeholders involved, after the trial phase will result the alpha-version of the e-learning platform, and all tools in English and all partner languages. A variety of dissemination measures will accompany this process. All tools will be available for the interested public online in a print version free of charge. Professional associations, voluntary associations, lobby groups and governmental organisations, decision makers and stakeholders on local, regional, national and European level, and the public will be informed about the project, its aims and outcomes. The project results will sum up in providing, free of charge, an appealing low cost game-based learning tool to care homes, staff members, volunteers, committed relatives of care home residents and the interested public. The desired impact of the activities during the lifetime of the project and beyond, is to offer a viable and easy to use tool that attracts and enables an increased number of people to make a qualified contribution to the quality of life of dependent seniors in care homes. It also aims at making an impact on the perspective of professional carers, from being necessary but not highly esteemed, towards a status that reflects their manifold skills and the significant contribution they make to an ageing society. Increased awareness and knowledge about what quality of life means on a concrete and applicable level is helpful to everybody - no matter what age, no matter in which country.
Through the learning game, the partners wanted to make sure all players increase their existing knowledge about the QoL of dependent seniors, so that they can make a significant contribution. We wanted to: Increase the willingness to learn through a low threshold to learning. Promote a more positive attitude towards elder people by creating appealing tools. Make staff members gain increased recognition. Make all parties benefit: residents, families, volunteers, professional carers and nursing homes. Help increasing the services provided by all stakeholders involved by learning by which criteria must be fulfilled to guarantee the QoL to residents. Offer an easy-to-use training tool that makes learning easy and fun, and that can be adapted to the specific needs of care homes, professional and voluntary associations. Help Improve communication and collaboration between the stakeholders in order to improve QoL of the residents. Influence future policies, providing knowledge about the criteria that guarantee QoL of care homes residents. Attract new users with the innovative approach. Offer a tool that can be used in professional training as well. The broad public think in a more positive way about carers, and the elder.
The EU Member States are facing an increasing demand for long-term-care in homes for dependent seniors. The labour market of professional carers is tight and getting worse due to COVID-19. Education and training is needed to guarantee the QoL for the residents of care homes, taking into account their families, too. Collaboration and mutual understanding with the care givers is not easy. Care homes have limited resources, and need to draw upon a workforce with lower educational level. Volunteers often have no specific qualification. Learning and training takes time and is costly. The idea was to design and create a training measure that is innovative, appealing and easy to provide in all kinds of settings (care facilities, volunteer associations, at home). It should be fun, user-friendly, easy to understand, and time efficient. It aims at • Promoting high quality standards for the residents through mutual understanding, team work, knowledge sharing among different stakeholders; • Offering tools to be easily used anywhere, at low cost, and time effective; • Making learning easy and complex content accessible to people without professional background or lower education level; • Be innovative: game-based learning; easy and fun.