ELSA addresses the learning needs of professional caregivers working in residential and home care services, and of relatives caring for frail older people living at home or in residential care.  

These two groups are traditionally not merged in relation to their learning/training needs or when updating their caring skills and competencies, which in some cases are very similar and even overlap.

Following a commonly agreed path, and through the provision of training across six workshops to harmonise their approaches and methodologies, the Partners will produce short videos, photos, and collect accounts of caregivers (professionals and relatives) on a number of relevant topics in relation to the training needs of the target groups.

The partners base their work on the approaches of among others, Carl Rogers, Tom Kitwood, Christine Kovach and Moyra Jones.

A multilingual website, collecting the videos, photos, texts produced in the various countries will be interfaced with Facebook and YouTube for creating social networks in 4 languages open to professionals and relatives.

The Partners will raise interest around the project through their networks, and widely disseminate it through newsletters, leaflets, brochures, a final conference and a video.

Objectives:

The project aims at further developing Lifelong Learning in sectors until now only partially developed, in particular through the use of social networks to facilitate the informal learning of adults in need of sharing experiences and acquiring new competencies either as professionals or as family caregivers.

The project's research will be conducted by partners who are expert in the educational field and partners involved in vocational and employment related activities. This will assure that the products will have relevance for these two connected fields, helping to plan and organise courses and learning paths capable of attracting caregivers and professionals, and to have a coherent approach both in adult education and training and professional courses aimed at the vocational field.

www.elsacare.eu