LLP SE-LEONARDO-LMP

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1 LLP SE-LEONARDO-LMP

2 Progress Report Public Part LLP SE-LEONARDO-LMP 2 / 18

3 Project information Project acronym: STAR Project title: Skills Training and Re-Skilling for Carers of People with Dementia Project number: Sub-programme or KA: Leonardo da Vinci Project website: Reporting period: From 01/12/2010 To 31/05/2012 Report version: 1.0 Date of preparation: 05/11/2012 Beneficiary organisation: IsanInternit AB Project coordinator: Johan E. Bengtsson Project coordinator organisation: IsanInternit AB Project coordinator telephone number: Project coordinator address: This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication [communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein Copyright Education, Audiovisual & Culture Executive Agency. The document may be freely copied and distributed provided that no modifications are made, that the source is acknowledged and that this copyright notice is included LLP SE-LEONARDO-LMP 3 / 18

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5 Executive Summary The STAR project has as its target audience all those who are in any way caring for persons with dementia, or aim to. This varies widely in Europe, and includes relatives, professional staff or sometimes unqualified persons from low-cost countries. The STAR project creates a methodology and content for improving the skills of the Carers for People with Dementia, by creating a platform with training modules for how to best provide care. An ambitious curriculum has been created that it will fill with as many training modules as it possibly can during the project The STAR consortium has partners from dementia research, vocational education and training (VET) providers, designers and technology experts, which ensures that STAR satisfies user needs and can become a sustainable long-term solution. The STAR project has inventoried available dementia training in UK, The Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, Romania, Malta and Spain. The project is already engaging with experts and practitioners via European workshops and national meetings, and the relevant stakeholders will be described in a public report. In order to achieve wide spread attention, attractive posters and flyers have been created, that are frequently disseminated at regional, national and international events. In most countries dementia training is provided only as face-to-face training and in some regions such training simply does not exist. In other countries, good online dementia training programmes already exist, for example Demens ABC in Sweden and the Open Dementia Programme in the UK. STAR can provide online training in countries where the availability of such training is lacking, or it can complement existing online training with more advanced training modules, peer communities and combined face-to-face and online training in collaboration with local VET providers. STAR has spread the word about the need for more available training of carers for Persons with Dementia, attracting interest from several new countries, and in May 2012 organised a European Workshop that can be re-lived on the project's web site. During the autumn, STAR will be busy preparing the educational content for piloting in UK, The Netherlands, Italy and Sweden more countries are welcome! After the piloting period that ends in June 2013, evaluation will follow and contacts will be made to ensure sustainable long term operation. Due to the high interest from additional countries, possibilities of transferring the STAR innovation will be explored. In October 2013, STAR will launch its solution at the Alzheimer Europe conference in Malta. In addition to disseminating experiences from piloting, this will be an important event that has the attention of key dementia stakeholders from all of Europe, and thus can facilitate the further introduction of the STAR solution into more countries. Read more on our extensive web site where you will find a detailed description of the project, all public reports, the available learning paths, course materials, exercises and case videos. This is also the place where you can start interacting with the STAR European community for experts and - when the piloting starts also national communities of peer carers and practitioners LLP SE-LEONARDO-LMP 5 / 18

6 Table of Contents 1. PROJECT OBJECTIVES PROJECT APPROACH PROJECT OUTCOMES & RESULTS PARTNERSHIPS PLANS FOR THE FUTURE CONTRIBUTION TO EU POLICIES CONCLUSION LLP SE-LEONARDO-LMP 6 / 18

7 1. Project Objectives The STAR project creates a methodology and content for improving the skills of the emerging job figure of Carers for People with Dementia, by creating a technology platform with educational modules for best practice caring. STAR is aiming to provide elearning for carers to assist people with dementia. An ageing EU population with dementia demands more trained carers. The STAR ICT-based content backed with 'user friendly' easy to comprehend learning material will enhance the learning experience for people coming from all walks of life and educational levels. The aim of STAR is to encourage people to undertake training and improve their skills so that they increase their employability. The multi-linguistic aspect of the portal will further enhance the importance since it will cater for a cross-border community as well as immigrants residing in EU countries. The multi-linguistic aspect is important given that we wish to cater for people working in residences. These can be immigrants who are European, eastern European and even non-europeans LLP SE-LEONARDO-LMP 7 / 18

8 2. Project Approach We realise that the dementia care situation varies widely in Europe, however the underlying problems are the same and best practice dementia care methods can be applied everywhere. Therefore, the STAR approach is to initially identify best-practice dementia caring and any existing training programmes for it and then to capture this in a curriculum with training modules at different levels that can be taken depending on the existing skills level of the carer. While it is unrealistic to create all the foreseen training modules within the STAR budget with the quality that we require, a sufficient number of modules will be made available for basic training and with advanced levels in select areas. Most importantly, we wish to be a catalyst for making dementia care training much more available in Europe. An important resource is the STAR public web site, where we use a best practice model for marketing; Attraction Information Desire Action. During piloting, this web page will morph into becoming a starting point for all needs for dementia care training. During and after the piloting phase, the STAR platform and content will be evaluated by the project, and an external evaluator will then assess the results and impact of the STAR project. A key element of the STAR approach is to engage with external stakeholders for piloting and for making STAR sustainable in the long-term. Therefore attractive dissemination materials have been created from the very start, and contacts with national stakeholders are going on in parallel with developing the platform and the educational content. The European workshop half-way through the project initiated many new contacts, and we already have our aims set for launching STAR at the Alzheimer Europe conference in Malta in October Meet us there! LLP SE-LEONARDO-LMP 8 / 18

9 3. Project Outcomes & Results The STAR project has already produced important results. Most importantly, the course structure and key contents have been decided based on the body-ofknowledge in dementia present within the Project consortium. These have been illustrated in a flyer that describes the STAR project aims and provides a curriculum overview. Figure: The STAR Flyer This course structure captures what existing dementia care courses focus on, while adding a further dimension of more advanced content that is often missing in existing online training. Figure: The STAR Training Areas LLP SE-LEONARDO-LMP 9 / 18

10 In addition, each of the eight training areas has a module card that explains the key contents, the one for the first module is shown here as an example. Figure: A Course Module Card A stakeholder analysis has been performed for UK, Italy and Malta. Sweden and The Netherlands will follow soon. This is a work in progress, since being a hub for finding other stakeholders in Europe will be a critical factor for the success of STAR. Read all about it at LLP SE-LEONARDO-LMP 10 / 18

11 National meetings have been held in UK and Malta, to obtain early feeback on the platform and proposed content. STAR contributed a presentation and workshop session at the ADI conference in London 6-7 th March Overall, good feedback was received and new countries declared their interest to take part in the later expansion stages of STAR. The participation at ADI 2012 has given us valuable experience and contacts to contribute a presentation and demonstration at Alzheimer Europe 2013, a perfect setting for the STAR Final Launch Event! The European Workshop on Online Training in Dementia on 25 th May 2012 in Stafford was a great success! Approximately 200 delegatres participated either in person or online. A high quality video distribution from the TV studio used was made publicly available and Twitter was used as a channel for asking questions to the workshop. Johan E. Bengtsson Prof. George Tadros Prof. Tom Arie The external speakers were Tom Arie, CBE Professor Emeritus of Health Care of the Elderly, Nottingham University and Will Boyce, Chief Executive of the APPROACH charity. The STAR team introduced the STAR project, platform and content LLP SE-LEONARDO-LMP 11 / 18

12 A panel debate with the speakers and the STAR team highlighted how different dementia care is organised in the European countries. A key result from the workshop is that there is a genuine interest for STAR and that the whole of the north-west midlands region was encouraged to use STAR. This area covers 3 million people and over 20 health care organisations dealing with Dementia. The STAR platform has been created and the first training module has been installed for tests and verification: LLP SE-LEONARDO-LMP 12 / 18

13 Figures: Sample screens from Module 1 What is Dementia The course platform - while still under development - can be accessed at The increase in ambitions for the curriculum has made us focus on the information content and good visuals in the training modules. Case videos and interactive exercises will be added closer to the piloting, including interviews with dementia experts, persons with dementia and carers (with permission), and learning games. Another shift of plans is that stakeholder contacts and national meetings will be used more directly for recruiting users for piloting, since we found that we had already ample access to relevant stakeholders in the STAR countries LLP SE-LEONARDO-LMP 13 / 18

14 4. Partnerships STAR is composed of partners from across Europe, from Sweden, UK, The Netherlands, Italy, Malta, Romania and Spain. This is a key strength of the STAR consortium. It allows the project to gain an insight into the needs for training in dementia care from different perspectives. In countries like Sweden, The Netherlands and UK dementia care is considered well organised, however, still lacking sometimes in introducing new staff and struggling to reach out to the relatives. In contrast, in Romania dementia care is not organised by the government, and it is therefore difficult to find stakeholders that view STAR as a viable opportunity in that country. Figure: The STAR participants at the project kickoff in Luleå So, what is it like to work in such a diverse project team? Well, it is... enjoyable. Even though we are far apart on a day-to-day basis, we feel connected and work well together. Most importantly, we continuously look for better tools for meeting and collaborating electronically. For the time being we make big use of the Google meeting tools, because they are very easy to use and support up to ten video participants at no cost (and the technology originated from the home town of the project coordinator, Luleå!). We also use Google Site for our internal project website, and Google Drive for storing work materials. There are and will be other good project tools out there, but these are the ones that for the moment work best for us. STAR has already engaged with national dementia associations, local care providers and VET providers in The Netherlands, Sweden, UK, Italy and Malta. They will be engaged during the piloting phase, and will help in making STAR a sustainable reality in those countries LLP SE-LEONARDO-LMP 14 / 18

15 5. Plans for the Future During the autumn 2012, STAR will create digital content according to its master curriculum and training module descriptions. More modules will have finished content, and lively video and interactive exercises will be added. Further national meetings will be organised, in Sweden, The Netherlands and Italy. Based on these meetings the public stakeholder analysis will be completed and made available on the STAR web site. Nevertheless, this will be an on-going element of work to create value for all those that need to find out who is active in dementia care training in Europe. When sufficient training modules are ready, the stakeholder network of STAR will be used to recruit interested carers of persons with dementia. They will then be given access to the STAR system for a period of 2-4 months, and it will then be evaluated in relation to how effective the training has been. The dementia and training experts in the project will evaluate the outcomes from quality of life and pedagogical perspectives, while an external evaluator will make an overall assessment of the project outcomes. We will try to co-organise a session on the theme "ICT and Dementia" at the ICT and Health conference in Tromsö 6-7 th June The other projects to involve in that session are RemoDem (integrated template of care in the Northern Periphery), Dem@Dare (ICT for sensor-based assessment and support) and KITENPI (collaboration between academia and ICT industry in the Kolarctic area). We trust that our results will spark a lot of interest around Europe, and therefore aim to organise a session focusing on training for dementia caring at the Alzheimer Europe conference 10-12th October 2013 to be held in Malta, which will also serve as the final event of the project. Meet us there! Figure: The STAR flyers and course module cards LLP SE-LEONARDO-LMP 15 / 18

16 6. Contribution to EU policies 2012 is the European Year for Active Aging. How can that happen, when more than 7 million elderly are constrained by dementia in various stages, including their families? There is reason for call-to-action here, and STAR has already started! Figure: The cost of dementia in different parts of Europe STAR will enhance lifelong learning education towards the creation of growth and jobs. STAR also contributes to more employment opportunities, by increasing the value of having skilled carers for persons with dementia, also enabling more relatives to stay in work life. In the report "Growth, Jobs and Social Progress in the EU" 2009 by the Social Protection Committee, it is stated as part of evaluating the Lisbon Strategy that "the risk of poverty faced by working age adults without work (unemployed or inactive) is more than 3 times higher than those in work". Increasing the participation of migrants in employment and thereby strengthening their social integration is one of the priorities for intervention of the European Social Fund in the period 2007 to STAR also contributes to mobility within Europe, in that prospective carers for persons with dementia coming from another country within or outside EU can receive proper training online in their own language, in a pedagogical structure that is common within the EU LLP SE-LEONARDO-LMP 16 / 18

17 7. Conclusion The STAR project has reached its half way mark and is well on its way to achieve its ambitious objectives. Feedback from personal contacts with stakeholders and carers in the various countries continues to strengthen the consortium s aim to create learning materials for this growing societal challenge. The project has been successful in raising a high profile and expectations in a way that bodes well for the next stage the piloting of the course materials in Sweden, UK, Netherlands and Italy. The STAR partners are sending out an open invite to all those that want to test the materials on and to look out for the online communities that will start operating in 2013, on our website We look forward to helping Europe s carers both formal and informal improve their skills, in such a way as to give them more confidence and deliver an overall better holistic form of care to people with dementia LLP SE-LEONARDO-LMP 17 / 18

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