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MTÜ Eesti Omastehooldus/NGO Estonian Carers

Country: Estonia

MTÜ Eesti Omastehooldus/NGO Estonian Carers

1 Projects, page 1 of 1
  • Funder: European Commission Project Code: 2018-1-EE01-KA204-047079
    Funder Contribution: 60,262 EUR

    In Europe, in case of chronic illnesses, 80% of all care is provided by informal carers – i.e. people who provide unpaid care to someone with a chronic disease, disability or other long-lasting health or care need, outside of a professional or formal framework. While caring for a loved one can be a source of great personal satisfaction, it does create its own set of challenges. Although in households when a member has a chronic illness or disability one of the relatives is often designated as “primary care” (i.e. the person bearing the main care responsibilities), we know that when there is a change in one family member, it affects all family members (Wright and Leahey, 2000). A functional relationship among caregivers and care recipient is the key for a successful change of roles and the adaptation of the family. Therefore, to face this change, a new balance should be established in the family. On the other hand, we know that people belonging to different age groups and with different kinships to the care-recipient (young children, adult children, grandchildren, spouses…) can have different experiences and perspective on the burden of care, so it is necessary to take all of them in account in order to be able to provide a comprehensive and effective support to families with caring responsibilities. In order to respond to all these needs the S.IN.CA.L.A. partnership believes in the importance of developing and piloting a model of pedagogical interventions based on a family-focused approach able to identifying strengths as well as vulnerabilities of all family members, addressing the challenges that might arise from the disease and building individual and family resilience. The educational tools developed will be based on experiences carried out in Greece, by partner Alzheimer Hellas, and will be adapted and transferred to all other country contexts.During the implementation of the project, the main outcome has been the development of Intellectual Output 1. This resulted in the research report focusing on the family member's experiences of caring role. With the research report the partnership created literature review that informed the methodology and built towards data collection and analysis on the respective findings. For the data collection, use of focus group interviews brought together 86 participants from the partnership countries (spouses, children and grandchildren of 60+ family member with care needs). Alongside these activities the partnership formed guidelines for such data collection, assembled data collection kit, created qualitative data analysis forms and delivered the research report with the input from the professionals working with carers in partnership countries, 42 in total. Such approach validated the findings, improved the overall process and informed the build-up of following Intellectual outputs. Especially, the Intellectual output 2, which would have resulted in pedagogical intervention tailored for family carers in partnership countries.In order to communicate the aims of the project, activities and the results of the Intellectual output 1, different type of dissemination activities were completed - project leaflets, press releases, newsletters, articles, presentations etc. The target audience varied based on the type of activity, 20-40 people in audience to 15 000 visitors on the websites monthly. Efforts were made to reach different audiences, starting from the family carers, social workers on local level, working up to national level policy makers and support networks.The main practical results expected on the completion of the project would have been: (1) a tested pedagogical method based on narration, adapted to different EU-country contexts, and targeting household who are caring for older dependent family members with the goal of increasing their family-resilience; (2) a MOOC, to transfer the results achieved and the lessons learnt to a wider audience of professionals. We therefore expect to make available a methodology that educators, social workers and carer support workers can use in their local contexts to engage with families with caring responsibilities in order to improve the resilience of the household and mitigate the negative impacts of caring in the households. The project was coordinated by MTÜ Eesti Omastehooldus and developed by a diverse partnership of NGOs working with older persons and their carers in Portugual (CASO50+), Italy (Anziani e non solo), Slovenia (Spominčica /Forget-me-not - Alzheimer Slovenia) and Co-Creation Support CLG (Ireland). The expert partner, is the Greek Association of Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders (Alzheimer Hellas).For professionals and stakeholders, we expect an increased consciousness of how providing care can impact on the whole family and the capacity to use this deeper understanding to improve and innovate their services, including through the introduction of narrative techniques. On local stakeholders and communities, we expect an increased awareness of the challenges of caring at societal level and on innovative experiences and practices carried out in other countries that could be of inspiration for new policies and services. We also expect increased openness towards other European countries and cultures, increased awareness of the importance to adopt a whole-family approach and an increased awareness about the contribution of the European Union activities towards the support to informal carers. In whole, the expectations were met and the innovative approach created momentum for different interventions in favor of family carers.

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