CARERSUPPORT - innovative platform for informal carers' training, orientation and collaboration | Interreg Europe

About this good practice

By project HoCare

Published on 03 September 2018

Romania

Bucureşti-Ilfov

CarerSupport aims at reducing the fragmentation of existing service models, based on the introduction of a centralized platform, which serves as a single entry point to a wide range of services for secondary users (i.e. informal carers) including training services, psychological support services, as well as a range of tele-consultation and collaboration services (with the involvement of formal carers and health professionals). The main exploitable products and services: (i) Training materials and courses, (ii) Training programmes, (iii) Tele-consulting services including synchronous interactions in case of emergency, (iv) Psychological support services and programmes. The platform exploitation agreement, which regulates rights and obligations of joint exploitation of partners targeting secondary users from the consortium organizations, their business networks, as well as the project’s external stakeholders’ group, is ready. From marketing and business perspective the full roll-out of the services needs 12 months which allow the consortium to ensure a critical mass of participants, along with a critical mass of content which will boost the commercial success of the services to be offered to users and other stakeholders: Informal Carers, Associations, Formal care service providers (public and / or private), Providers of support services (training organizations, experts in psychology), Local public authorities (e.g. the social service dept from local city hall).

Expert opinion

The practice represents an example of how information and communication technologies may be employed as part of public healthcare policy. In this case, the platform created brings together a variety of services for informal carers, making the services more accessible. The platform also has a business side, as it involves service and content providers aiming to reach the informal carers target group. Since the platform was designed with a pan-European open access system in mind, with four country-specific versions from the start, this practice should be well-suited for transfer. However, as is always the case with platform-based services, the successful implementation and sustainability rely on a critical mass of users and suppliers perceiving an added value of the platform. The readiness and willingness to adopt the practice may vary between stakeholder groups in different regions or countries.

Carl Arvid Dahlöf

Resources needed

Funding 2.3mil Euro for the platform and its content
Staff costs – 60%; Administration – 3%;External expertise – 6%; Travel and accommodation – 10%; Meetings and events – 15%; Promotion costs – 1%; Equipment – 1%; Other – 4%.

Evidence of success

The main innovation of the good practice lies in the creation in four languages and operation of an open access pan-European information and communication technologues - based platform for the training, orientation and support of informal carers for old people. "Ana Aslan" International Foundation, coordinated by an Italian entity, developed a pilot test with content in Romanian and at almost one year of concluding it, there are 100 national registered users covering the informal carers' needs.

Potential for learning or transfer

The innovative idea of creating an information and communication technologues (ICT)-based platform that integrates the training, orientation and support for informal carers of the elders is in line with the public policy for healthy people. The 4 country personnalisations for local informal carers, organizations providing training services, ICT solution providers for active ageing and social inclusion, as well as for policy makers in Long Term Care policies sustain its transferability because it is designed as a sustainable pan-European ICT based ecosystem- with the possibility to localize its content towards legal individual context, markets, languages. Now, "Ana Aslan" International Foundation , the Romanian member of the CarerSupport consortium, is studying the possibility to extend the platform use for new content of courses based on financial support under Operational Programme Calls, with Hocare partner National Institute for Research and Development in Informatics Bucharest .