Health and Welfare

DEMETRA

Description

In dementia care context it has been noticed that formal care givers have needs for a scaffolding function in following areas: training on communication with demented; training on how to relieve from stress; developing emotional and relational competences in front of elderly and their decline, even in normal ageing. Previous studies suggested that positive psychology training aimed at improving the psychological well-being and emotional skills of caregivers;  formal caregivers can have beneficial effects form such training in terms of relationship with elderly and demented people. This background supports the urgent need to map and understand the situation of the caregivers and to give them the needed skills to support their work with the people affected by dementia.
The Demetra project aims at enhancing formal caregivers ability in emotional regulation by positive psychology and mindfulness based training.

Objectives

Main objectives of the project are:

• to create a learning context in which formal caregivers can learn new concepts and skills in the management of potentially negative effect of long term care relationship.
• to establish a common and shared knowledge for the personal growth of caregivers in elderly care.
• to develop a care concept focused on relationship as main field for patients and carers well-being;
• to improve workers attitude towards well-being through the assimilation of multidimensional actions (movement, massages, physical exercise, mindfullness, cognitive and emotional competenceskill training;
• to create a transnational pool of trainers who shares knowledge and who support single local context, models and methodologies;
• to transfer best practices from local testing through transnational training

Activities

The project plan foresees four coordination meetings and 3 learning and teaching training activities in the participating countries.

The project lenght, due to COVID outbreak at the beginning of 2020, has been extented on one year (September 2021).

Impact

Exchange of practices for formal caregivers working with people with dementia and the train the trainer course will create a powerful learning experience leading to positive effects on several stakeholders such as professional and formal caregivers, decision makers and people with dementia.

1- Participants and target groups
The project will see the direct participation of target groups during the different phases of development and implementation. The impacts on them will contribute to increase the quality of social services provided to elderly people with dementia and their families.

2- For participating organisations, they will increase the European dimension of the activities. The practices exchanged, are expected to create new follow-up proposals/initiatives that will further deepen their competences in this field.

3- The project partners will carry out an intense networking activity from the implementation phase to engage stakeholders. They will be supported by the exchange of practices and the results of the transnational training developed in the project for improving the quality of their services.

Project results/Products

The main result of this project, an exchange of best practices based on transnational training for trainers and training courses for local formal caregivers, will enhance competences related to person centred care for people with dementia.