CareEr

Background Throughout Europe, informal carers cover 80% of long-term care. Family members are the largest care providers for older, frail, disabled and chronically ill people of all ages. However, caring for a loved one often comes with a considerable personal cost to family carers, including many financial, professional, health and social consequences. Most of informal carers are at risk of social exclusion and there is a need to help them to move from social isolation to active participation. As having unpaid caregiving responsibilities is often undervalued, there is also a need to raise informal carers' profile for themselves, and also for the society as a whole, by developing and validating the large set of skills that are required to be an informal carer. Main objective the CareEr project aims at empowering informal carers through a new training device created by and for informal carers. Based on three areas of key competences and self-assessment, CareEr will contribute to improve informal carers' condition as well as the quality of informal care. Description of activities First of all, the capital letter E of 'CareEr' stands for 'Engaging' and 'Empowering' informal carers. in total, 105 informal carers from 7 EU countries will participate in the CareEr project. Some of them will be engaged in local focus groups and 7 of them (one per participating country) will travel to Belgium, Greece and Italy to make their voice heard during the co-development phase of the CareEr training device. Empowerment also stems from the knowledge and competences that they will gain through their participation in three tailor-made training modules conducted by qualified trainers: 12 trainers will take part in a transnational training for trainers in order to enable them to master this new training device. Finally, in the context of free movement between countries, Empowerment will also result from achieving 'mutual recognition of validated skills' in the European labour market. The capital letter E also stands for the 'e-platform' that will be co-designed from the orientation taken in the Strategic focus groups. This new gaming-based virtual tool will contribute to help informal carers to move from isolation to a connected community of European informal carers and therefore, raise their awareness of the fact that they play an important role in the European care sectors. From this e-platform, they will be able to access learning materials in their own language, including e-learning and self-evaluation tools. Finally, CareEr also refers to career prospects that any informal carer should be allowed to have. As such, the CareEr project will support young carers and carers in employment to combine their caregiving responsibilities with their study or their job. For those in unemployment, CareEr will contribute to bridge the gap between the informal and the formal care sector and to increase informal carers work readiness. CareEr will link to previous EU projects and will up-to-date effective skills recognition tools dedicated to informal carers in order to make them more visible and attractive on the labour market. Impact The consortium made of European Civil Society organisations engaged in the care sector, a local authority and a university, aims at delivering innovative training materials including a training tool based on a e-platform enabling informal carers to improve their knowledge and competences. CareEr will contribute to improve the quality of informal care in Europe.