Innovative Management and Educational Practices in Elderly Centres
In most European countries the lifestyle of families has changed over the past centuries: late marriages, low birth rate, increasing number of lonely and elderly people, single – parent families became prevailing factors. In this scenario, social workers and adult educators engaged in Elderly Care Centres (ECCs) are facing new challenges: how to better integrate their interventions, in order to promote an holistic wellbeing of older people; which kind of organisational changes should be taken into account to create new learning environments in ECCs by opening their specific education provisions to local communities; which competences should be improved by these practitioners to increase the educational supply and to be more integrated in the local LLL community.
Specific concerns are related, on one side, to the risk of polarisation of their intervention between the tightly sanitary care and the organisation of leisure time and informal learning (dance, table games or travels), without any structural reflection on their educational role, not only for the direct beneficiaries, but also for the families and the wider community. On the other side, the reduction of resources for the elderly care policies forces social workers to cover a wider range of functions with the risk of losing their fundamental contribution to the social exclusion prevention of older people and as activators of common resources for maintaining/creating their best life conditions.
Objectives
INNOMEC project aims at
- > improving elderly participation in social and cultural life
- > fostering mutual learning with youngest generations and family members
- > raising awareness among stakeholders, especially social workers and adult educators committed in services to elderly persons about their changing professional role in the changing society
- > reinforcing local and European networks and a social responsibility approach, focusing on the contributions of the ECCs to the lifelong learning strategy
Measures planed
- > Organisational analysis of ECCs focusing on their potential as new learning environments, and training needs analysis of the whole staff in order to provide answers to the local communities` needs on active ageing
- > Collection and peer-review of the best practices around Europe for the management of ECCs as new learning environment
- > Activation of the local networks in order to engage the key players: formal and informal groups of citizens, public bodies and third sectors organisations dealing with social, cultural, educational, and health care services
- > Co-design with the final users (elderly people and families) of training modules for the ECC’s staff, the adult educators and the high education students, focusing on the development of targeted learning subsidies for older learners
- > EU train the trainer modules for 20 social workers on: Audio Psycho Phonology, Trancultural Biography Work, and Memoro
- > Developing and testing of a sample of the training modules for elderly through a “learning by doing” approach.
- > Reflecting about the testing phase in a participatory way and develop a toolkit for social workers/adult educators and senior volunteers with the training pathways for final beneficiaries (older people, families, students, the overall community)
539829-LLP-1-2013-1-IT-GRUNDTVIG-GMP
Duration: 11/2013 – 10/2015
INNOMEC Website / INNOMEC on Facebook
Projectpartners:
Speha Fresia Società Cooperativa, Rome, IT (coord. Partner)
Euro Idea, Brussels, BE
Mykolas Romeris Universite, Vilnius, LT
Studio Centro Veneto, Vicenza, IT
Hrafnista – Continuing Care Communities, Reykjavik, IS
inspire – Verein für Bildung und Management, Graz, AT
Contact: inspire
