Home

Final M-CARE conference

Beneficiary with Personal Caregiver

Beneficiary with Personal Caregiver

On 1 December 2015, the final M-CARE conference was organised in Brussels, Belgium at VLEVA premises. The event “Caring for people with disabilities and older people: challenges, opportunities and (mobile/online) training solutions” focussed on the importance of good quality personal caregiving (PCG) for people with disabilities and older people. Focus was on caring in a broader perspective, and how M-CARE’s (mobile/online) training solutions can contribute to successful PCGs.

“I would like to seize the opportunity to thank you for such an interesting event last week. I have to say I am very impressed with the quality of your report. Your work is also extremely useful and meaningful. Thank you for the interaction as well as the new perspectives that you and the team allowed to emerge. It was a great event, well done to you and the team! Do keep me on your mailing list : I’d love to hear about your upcoming activities.”

N. G., participant

Target groups:

  • (Potential) personal assistants/personal caregivers
  • Nurses
  • Social workers
  • People with disabilities
  • Parents/friends/colleagues
  • Representative organisations of people with disabilities
  • Policy makers

Presentations

Videos
Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

Part 6:

Pictures
Set 1

Survey outcomes available

The outcomes of our pan-European survey are now available:

To fine-tune our work, we conducted a survey among current or potential personal care givers (PCGs) in Turkey, Bulgaria, Belgium, Germany and Greece. In addition, we also contact people with disabilities (PwD), older people, family members of PwD, policy makers, training/VET centres and care centres in order to:

  • identify the needs of the project’s end-users (personal caregivers for people with disabilities and/or older people) and beneficiaries (PwD, older people, family members, stakeholders).
  • obtain a good perception of the need for adjustments in existing PCG training practices to enable the trainees (users) and beneficiaries to achieve personal accomplishment and satisfaction.
  • define a set of learning activities appropriate to and usable across a range of identified user needs.
  • gain familiarity with the nature and potential value of adjustments in training methods and in learning strategies to meet the needs of end-users and beneficiaries.
  • identify and highlight similarities and differences between national contexts in the partner countries.

While the analysis was completed, we still welcome additional entries.

English

Turkish

German

Dutch

Greek

Bulgarian

About M-Care

European people with disabilities (especially those with mobility impairments) depend heavily on personal care givers (PCGs). While this assistance is crucial in ensuring a daily quality of life (assisting with basic tasks such as getting dressed, eating, taking a bath/shower), it is still quantitatively and qualitatively a huge problem.

Few PCGs get a proper training, if any, while such formal training hardly exists in EU countries. Most PCGs are low skilled, have to be trained on the field, thus making it a very laborious and at the same time a tricky “adventure” for people with disabilities, but equally for e.g. older people who make use of them.

Raising competence levels of these low-skilled people to be benefit of care recipients is at the core of M-CARE. It aims to ensure that VET centres can offer such training anywhere anytime, for low-skilled people (without jobs), or people that want to extend their service provision (independent nurses, caretakers, etc.). Blended training approaches such as simulation both via video and animations, audio, textual training format, including hands-on practicing will be supported by the project.

M-CARE will generate:

  • a dedicated PCG curriculum and relevant training material for different disabilities, applicable in every country in the EU and beyond, provided under a creative commons license (so “free”);
  • innovative ICT-based Web 2.0 mobile/online learning platforms (PC, smartphone and tablet PC) with multilingual interfaces, developed as Open Source applications (“free”), provided freely to VET centres; supported by a learning methodology;
  • piloting with end-users (mainly low skilled people) and beneficiaries (people with disabilities and older people) in Belgium, Germany, Bulgaria, and Turkey;
  • provision of online portal with dedicated communities, providing access to PCGs learning modules for VET centres.

The impact of this will be pan-European (VET, ICT driven), and immediately measurable in increased PCG employment.

| datetime 3 January, 2014 11:48 am