CARER+: Ageing well in the community and at home: developing the digital competences of care workers to improve the quality of life of older people

Carer+ was a three year project funded under the European Commission’s ‘ICT Policy Support’ programme. Its main objective was to explore how new technologies can be used to improve the quality of care provided to older people at home. The project was aimed at three broad groups: professional care workers; informal care givers, and care receivers.

The project involved 14 organisations from 8 different EU countries. It was led by IFEF: the Institute for vocational training of household employers in France. The project aims were to:

• Develop an on-line portal to support the continuing professional development of care workers and care givers

• Develop a Competence Framework for care workers and care givers to develop their digital competences.

• Develop a learning programme to enable care workers and care givers to acquire these competences.

• Develop an accreditation and certification system to recognise and certify these digital competences.

• Develop and test a range of technical platforms and tools to enable these competences to be applied in practice, and so support more effective care delivery. These will be tested and evaluated with 250 older people who are cared for at home; 200 professional care workers and 50 informal care givers in five pilot sites across Europe.

Visit the project website by following the link Carer+ Project