CARESS project aims to overcome the “skills gap” identified in the homecare for older adults, i.e. the gap between skills demanded by end-users and their families and those offered by national health systems, private care institutions and Home Health Care Practitioners (HHCPs).CARESS Alliance includes different kind of partners, such as VET providers and Regulatory Bodies in the field of homecare, sector-specific experts, HHCP professional associations and representatives of end-users; CARESS results will be very interesting and useful for all of them, since CARESS contributes crucially to the professionalization of homecare and the improvement of the quality of the services.The project pursues the following objectives, at national and European level:a. definition of the specific roles of each HHCP;b. definition of skills which should characterize each HHCP;c. definition of VET pathways/curricula that HHCPs should attend to get skilled in elderly homecare;d. definition of HHCP career pathways;e. recognition of qualifications and consequent enhancing of labour mobility;f. integration of the above defined information about HHCP in national/local occupational profiles and VET curricula.The above mentioned objectives are addressed through a number of activities.An initial contextual analysis allows for collecting information about existing HHCPs and their respective skills and roles, existing curricula, VET and career pathways; then, this information is organized and systematized in a EU framework for VET in the field of homecare. National pilots are designed and implemented referring to the EU framework, in order to validate its efficacy (and possibly refine it) and to overcome specific national skill gaps. Pilots will include different educational methods, as well as presence and distance learning, and will be based both on formal and on non-formal and informal learning. ICT tools and platforms will be designed and developed to support e-learning and Virtual Communities of Practice.As a consequence of these activities, project expected outputs are:1) an EU Framework for VET in the field of homecare;2) guidelines supporting the use of the framework in the design of curricula;3) web-based solutions supporting collaborative work and collaborative design of joint curricula ;4) design documents of 3 VET pathways targeting different HHCP in 3 different countries;5) presence courses in Italy, Spain and Finland implementing the designed VET pathways;6) an integrated platform for e-learning and for supporting Virtual Communities of Practice;7) free Multilingual Open Contents targeting HHCPs implementing the distance component of national pilots;8) self-sustainable national and international Virtual Communities of Practice for HHCPs.After 18 months from the project start, the Preparation phase has been concluded (WP2), while the Implementation phase is the core of the activities (see Figure 1). Continuous monitoring activities (WP1 and WP8) are in full swing, as well as Dissemination, exploitation and sustainability ones (WP7). Evaluation activities have been just started, working on an Evaluation Plan.In particular, in the first 18 months of the project all of the transversal, functional WPs started and played a fundamental role in project management, quality assurance and sustainability. A number of results has been achieved including an Alliance Agreement, the set up the main governance bodies of the project, a Dissemination Plan, a Quality Assessment Plan and the project Website. WP2 activities about contextual analysis has been completed and 4 Deliverables have been produced including the main results. Outputs of WP2 has been take at the base of WP3 activities, aimed at producing the two main expected results of the project, i.e. the EU framework and the guidelines for its use. Development of the e-learning materials and Virtual Communities of Practice platform started.
CARESS project involved 13 partners form 4 EU countries. It was was aimed to overcome a “skills gap” identified in the field of older adults homecare, i.e. a gap between skills demanded by end-users and their families and those offered by Home Health Care Practitioners (HHCPs).CARESS offers a clear picture of the main roles, competences and curricula of 9 categories of homecare professionals working both in health and social care at older adults’ own homes in 31 EU countries. For the first time this information have been collected and systematized in an EU Framework available for free in a web-based system, allowing to: 1)DESIGN AND DEVELOP VET COURSES a) BASED ON INFORMATION about professionals’ ACTUAL competencies, roles and skills gaps; b) integrating EXISTING CURRICOLA in a “compensative” bottom-up approach2)SHARE BEST PRACTICES through countries and professionals;3)ENHANCE the COLLABORATION and the COORDINATION among professionals and thus coordination and integration among social and healthcare services.The EU Framework provides a fundamental help in order to identify the actual skill gap which characterize an homecare professional in a specific country. The Framework is endowed with an interactive Wizard interface allowing for its integration and update and with fundamental “training design tools” supporting VET teachers to design effective compensative modules, able to address a specific skill gap. The Framework and its tools have been tested during the project through the DESIGN AND THE IMPLEMENTATION OF 3 NATIONAL PILOT COURSES, targeting 3 different HHCPs in 3 different countries: Social-Health operators (IT), Registered Nurses (SP), Practical nurses (FIN); pilots were based on different educational methods, on presence and distance learning, and on formal and non-formal/informal learning. To support pilots implementation a number of outputs have been produced, such as:a)3 E-LEARNING MODULES about HHCPs transversal competences in 4 languages (EN, IT, SP, FIN): e-learning materials consists of 3 main types: 93 interactive materials, for individual self-fruition (SCORM 1.2 compliant); 3 video-pills, focusing on specific skills/practices or the use of technologies; 60 materials supporting Collaborative Learning in Virtual Classrooms: different learning strategies are implemented, such as role playing, case studies, etc.b)an INTEGRATED PLATFORM FOR E-LEARNING and for supporting VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE (VCP), for trainers, professionals, associations, The Integrated platform has been used by pilot students and then opened to any registered user who would like to join communities of professionals in the field of homecare. The VCP platform is an important example of how to manage non-formal learning in a professional curriculum, being endowed with specific functionalities allowing for its recognition. Any VET designer and teacher could use the VCP environment in order to support non-formal learning in a specific course; professional associations can adopt the VCP system as a common environment where members could share their own practices, documents, opinions, etc.Results of pilots evaluation and tools validation took to the refinement and the final release of the EU Framework. CARESS Framework can be updated even after the end of the project, since external contributors, after a registration process, can integrate/revise/update the information included in the framework; the reliability of information is assured by filtering rules integrated in the system.The main project results are accessible for free from the project website, at http://www.project-caress.eu/ Both the CARESS EU Framework and the Integrated Platform will be accessible for free to the public for at least one year by the end of the project. Students can access the e-learning materials on the Integrated platform for self-fruition and teachers can download them from the project website.