The European population is ageing and more people live into old age. This also means that there is an increase of age-related diseases such as dementia, placing higher levels of demand on caring services. People that suffer from dementia are excluded from social productivity, are at high risk of social exclusion and have a high demand for care. At the same time, there is an increasing lack of professionals in elderly care [2016, Eurostat]. Governmental authorities across Europe recognize this trend and promised more investments in the domain of elderly care. However, students do not consider the elderly sector as a fulfilling career option, leaving a gap between supply and demand for the care of the elderly. The iConnect project aimed to motivate students to make elderly care a potential and viable option for their study and future career, in parallel to the social inclusion of older people with dementia, by bringing them together in an intergenerational creative approach. We aimed to improve the knowledge and skills of students, the future care professionals, with our innovative creative learning program combining elements like music, art, play and drama. This way students, but also other stakeholders involved, will be equipped to contribute to the goals of dementia friendly environments. Through our project students gained new knowledge and skills related to communication, empathy and creativity, into practice while they make contact with people with dementia. People with dementia felt recognized and reinforced in their identity which enhanced the quality of life.The project selected a number of stakeholders as participants for activities and the output, being students and educators from Higher Education Institutes (HEI), care organisations and care professionals, specialised in dementia care, older people with dementia and their family and/or care givers and policy makers.Throughout the project we delivered 4 intellectual outputs; the Needs Specification Report (a research on current practices related to the use of creative elements and the needs of all involved stakeholders for the implementation of a inclusive dementia care), an innovative Module with learning and teaching material for educators and students, a Blended Learning Platform (based on Moodle structure) and the Transnational Implementation Guidelines, which helps HEI’s and educators across Europe to implement the training, the platform and the teaching material, supporting the impact, replicability and sustainability of iConnect. The guidelines takes up all the findings from the pilot and is complete package, including a teacher and student module, assessment methods, PowerPoints, manuals, index, video instructions and the online blended platform.The iConnect module adapted a co-design and partnership approach amongst students, educators, care providers and older people with dementia in developing all material and the online learning platform. Therefore creation of these 4 end products was supported by activities organised within the context of the project. We organized focus sessions, held interviews and organised an international Learning, Teaching and Training Activity (LTTA), which was a peer-to-peer training in which the participants shared skills and competences. Through the LTTA we trained the teachers and staff who would work with students in the pilot later in this project. The module was tested during this pilot of this project with students participating from four different HEI’s; Hogeschool Utrecht (HU, Netherlands), LAB University of Applied Sciences (LAB, Finland), University of Ioannina (UoI, formerly named TEI, Greece) and Udine University (UNIUD, Italy). Throughout the project each partner organised activities such as presentations, workshops and webinars in which the output was disseminated, tested or discussed. From all these activities given feedback was used to optimise the final outputs.At least 1000 stakeholders were reached through dissemination activities with an overall positive response. For the participating stakeholders the direct impact was enriching the awareness, knowledge, skills and attitudes. Especially in presentations, workshops and webinars participants vocalised their interest and accomplished awareness on the subject, which resulted in an increased willingness among educators to include the module within curricula. The module was used in HEI partners during the pilot and is now integrated in the curriculum of all partner HEI’s for the year(s) to come, sometimes even with a elaboration of the module. Participating students developed a compassionate and empathetic attitude to improve caring towards older people with dementia. Teachers felt empowered and equipped they can now transfer this new knowledge and skills on to the students. With older adults with dementia who participated in the pilot a decrease in the aggressive behaviour of the older adults was seen.

<< Objectives >>The development of a new technology enhanced method for dementia screening in older Deaf in Austrian & Greek Sign Languages b)a non-formal educational program addressed to the Deaf and experts, aiming: a) raise awareness in experts and the Deaf about Deaf culture, dementia, and the importance of its early screening in older Deaf, b)familiarize experts with the screening test (ST) c)to perform a pilot nonformal training on the ST to non experts native Greek signers to upskill the Greek Deaf<< Implementation >>Activities Production 1:Awareness raising seminars 2:Content creation and training material for the awareness raising seminars 3:Design and development of web-based Platform for screening test administration 4:Adaptation of the Screening Test in Austrian and Greek Sign Languages 5:Non-formal training seminars on the use and administration of the web-based screening test to experts 6:Pilot nonformal training on the use and administration of the web-based Screening Test to non-experts (Greek Deaf)<< Results >>● adapted BSL-CST dementia screening test in Austrian and Greek languages ● web-based platform for dementia screening test administration ● training material about dementia and the Deaf culture and their interrelation ● dementia awareness seminars across Deaf communities in Austria, Greece, Italy and Germany ● training seminars about the web-based dementia screening test in Austrian and Greek to experts and non experts, in order to make dementia screening accessible to the Deaf older adults

<< Background >>According to OECD research, by 2018, in the EU, around 7% of the population (over 60) have dementia. Studies foresee that this percentage will rise to over 8% by 2040 due to population ageing; the higher the number of elderly people in a country, the bigger the proportion of people with dementia.During the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone has been negatively affected by the crisis, but the more vulnerable have been disproportionately impacted. Many people with dementia have been experiencing a worsening of symptoms due to lack of access to care and social isolation.Moreover, adults and caregivers looking after people with dementia have experienced an intensification in stress and burden for both the lack of knowledge on the behavioural and attitudinal changes that characterise dementia and the anti-COVID restrictive measures that have forced everyone at home. Amongst the stressors, physical, emotional, and economic pressures are the ones that are affecting the most informal carers. For this reason, greater support for them is needed, including education on how to assist better in caring, a higher understanding of dementia itself, and the acquisition of educational methodologies to enable the engagement of people with dementia in cognitive activities.With this project, we aim to provide support to all those adults who look after people with dementia on a daily basis, with a specific focus on relatives, legal guardians, and informal carers, by developing useful training materials to decrease the physical, emotional, and economic burden to the families with suffering patients.The direct target groups of this project will be adults and relatives who are informal carers of people suffering from dementia.Beneficiaries will be people with dementia, including its associated diseases, NGOs working with senior citizens or dementia or Alzheimer's disease, nursing home facilities, residential care facilities, social workers and nurses, and volunteers providing assistance to people with dementia.<< Objectives >>Specific objectives of InfoCARE will be:- To provide families, adults and legal guardians of people suffering from dementia with useful tools, tips, and activities based on non-formal education (R1);- To raise awareness on dementia and its symptoms amongst their families and caregivers, and in the society;- To develop ad-hoc training contents based on a strong working methodology and NFE (R1);- To improve the social interaction between people suffering from dementia and their informal carers and families. specific innovative devices, such as Amazon Echo Show or Spot and Google Nest Hub (R2),- To increase digital skills and literacy amongst target groups;- To enhance caring and assistance conditions for caregivers;- To create a network between informal carers of people with dementia through support groups (R3);-To diminish the stigma surrounding people with dementia through the creation of innovative activities and the extensive use of new technologies and NFE.- To implement 2 piloting activities to directly involve the target groups, that will therefore provide useful feedback for the development of high-quality material;<< Implementation >>To reach the project’s goals, we aim to develop the following results:R1 - Training on Cognitive activities - Mind-Stimulating Activities for Dementia Patients;R2 - Remote caring - Mind-Stimulating Activities through new technologies;R3 - Development of support groups for relatives and legal guardians of people with dementia.Specific activities will be developed to reach goals and objectives:- Definition of an ad-hoc working methodology, resulting from the careful analysis led by the project consortium, in order to meet the needs of the target groups (R1);- Development of 4 modules which constitute the content of the Training (R1);- Adaptation of the activities of the R1 so that they can be performed through specific innovative devices, such as Amazon Echo Show or Spot and Google Nest Hub (R2);- Providing digital literacy support for the informal carers (R2);- 3 piloting activities involving at least 75 pax;- 10 case studies of successful support groups (R3).5 Transnational Project Meetings (TPMs) will be organised to assess strategic milestones of project outcomes, to validate working methodologies, perform interim quality and budget control, and reinforce the transnational partnership.<< Results >>The project results that will be implemented are the following:R1 - Training on Cognitive activities - Mind-Stimulating Activities for Dementia Patients; implemented with the extensive support of non-formal education. It will consist in the development of 4 Modules containing useful activities to stimulate the cognitive abilities in patients with dementia in case they deteriorate. A pilot activity will be implemented to test the materials and gather useful feedback from the target groups in order to deliver high-quality material.R2 - Remote caring - Mind-Stimulating Activities through new technologies; adapting the activities of R1 in a way that they can be performed remotely with the support of new technologies and devices such as, Amazon Echo Show or Spot and Google Nest Hub. In this way, we will provide a practical response to the COVID-19 restrictive measures of social distancing. A pilot activity will also be performed with the target groups.R3 - Development of support groups for relatives and legal guardians of people with dementia. A training to support informal caregivers to create support groups, in order to share experience, best practices, and to encourage them to overcome the stigma surrounding people with dementia. It will consist of 4 Modules and a pilot training at the end of which each partner will collect two best examples of support groups in their community, for a total of at least 10 case studies.All the deliverables and project outcomes will be produced in English and translated into project partners’ national languages to enhance their shareability and exploitation.To ensure a smooth and flawless implementation of PMI activities and project results, 5 TPMs will be organised at key project milestones, as further described in the dedicated section.The 5 Multiplier Events will make sure that all the beneficiaries, stakeholders, and potential future users of the project results will be reached, therefore producing a greater impact and ensuring longer-term sustainability, even after the project funding ends.Dissemination activities will be organised and implemented by all the project consortium according to specific roles in the project, which will be further described in the Sharing, Promotion and Use of the Project's Results section.

<< Background >>Services need to be developed where the elderly and their family can contribute on their own premises and on the basis of what they believe is important and meaningful to them. This will have to involve strengthening the user perspective and more emphasis on alternative thinking in the services. Alternative in the sense that the individual and next of kin must have more influence and control over services provided and decide what works. In this context, the use of peers and experienced workers may be appropriate measures.In recent years, in the health and welfare services, Peer Support Workers have been employed as a resource to promote the user perspective, strengthen the recovery orientation and better tailor the services to the needs of the users. When it comes to services for people with dementia, this has not yet been tested in Norway, but in the UK, there has been testing of such services on a small scale (Stott et al., 2017). There are two possible types of Peer Support Workers. (1) People in the early stages of developing dementia, and (2) next of kin to people with dementia.<< Objectives >>− The aim of the project is to help create sustainable and competency-enhancing services for people with dementia by finding new ways to involve users and their next of kin in service development.− The project is also going to help reduce the shame, stigma, and taboo associated with dementia, so that people affected are seeking help at an early stage.− Testing of Peer Support Workers in dementia care, primary for next of kin, but also for people in an early stage of dementia − Establish collaboration with involved parties in the project across countries− Find out what the status is of the services for people with dementia in selected municipalities. Clarify the role and function of experienced staff in dementia− Develop guidelines for PSW in dementia care− Disseminate information about the project to involved parties and other interested parties− Raising awareness about the status of elderly people/dementia as well as about the peer support workers and family caregivers in all participant countries.<< Implementation >>− Mapping the baseline situation− Establish the project organization− Collaboration meetings between parties to the project− Recruit and engage PSW (Peer Support Worker)− Conduct training of PSW − Testing of PSW<< Results >>Results: (intellectual outputs) double check− Report on the effects of PSW in dementia care− Developed a strategy for how to involve relatives in dementia care - advocacy− Guidelines for recruiting and qualifying of PSW− Developed training courses for PSW in dementia Care− Develop a digital platform for collaboration and networking between partners, participants and stakeholders − Established measures that can continue after the project has ended− Established a network for sharing of experience and knowledge specific for community based dementia care

In Europe, in case of chronic illnesses, 80% of all care is provided by informal carers – i.e. people who provide unpaid care to someone with a chronic disease, disability or other long-lasting health or care need, outside of a professional or formal framework. While caring for a loved one can be a source of great personal satisfaction, it does create its own set of challenges. Although in households when a member has a chronic illness or disability one of the relatives is often designated as “primary care” (i.e. the person bearing the main care responsibilities), we know that when there is a change in one family member, it affects all family members (Wright and Leahey, 2000). A functional relationship among caregivers and care recipient is the key for a successful change of roles and the adaptation of the family. Therefore, to face this change, a new balance should be established in the family. On the other hand, we know that people belonging to different age groups and with different kinships to the care-recipient (young children, adult children, grandchildren, spouses…) can have different experiences and perspective on the burden of care, so it is necessary to take all of them in account in order to be able to provide a comprehensive and effective support to families with caring responsibilities. In order to respond to all these needs the S.IN.CA.L.A. partnership believes in the importance of developing and piloting a model of pedagogical interventions based on a family-focused approach able to identifying strengths as well as vulnerabilities of all family members, addressing the challenges that might arise from the disease and building individual and family resilience. The educational tools developed will be based on experiences carried out in Greece, by partner Alzheimer Hellas, and will be adapted and transferred to all other country contexts.During the implementation of the project, the main outcome has been the development of Intellectual Output 1. This resulted in the research report focusing on the family member's experiences of caring role. With the research report the partnership created literature review that informed the methodology and built towards data collection and analysis on the respective findings. For the data collection, use of focus group interviews brought together 86 participants from the partnership countries (spouses, children and grandchildren of 60+ family member with care needs). Alongside these activities the partnership formed guidelines for such data collection, assembled data collection kit, created qualitative data analysis forms and delivered the research report with the input from the professionals working with carers in partnership countries, 42 in total. Such approach validated the findings, improved the overall process and informed the build-up of following Intellectual outputs. Especially, the Intellectual output 2, which would have resulted in pedagogical intervention tailored for family carers in partnership countries.In order to communicate the aims of the project, activities and the results of the Intellectual output 1, different type of dissemination activities were completed - project leaflets, press releases, newsletters, articles, presentations etc. The target audience varied based on the type of activity, 20-40 people in audience to 15 000 visitors on the websites monthly. Efforts were made to reach different audiences, starting from the family carers, social workers on local level, working up to national level policy makers and support networks.The main practical results expected on the completion of the project would have been: (1) a tested pedagogical method based on narration, adapted to different EU-country contexts, and targeting household who are caring for older dependent family members with the goal of increasing their family-resilience; (2) a MOOC, to transfer the results achieved and the lessons learnt to a wider audience of professionals. We therefore expect to make available a methodology that educators, social workers and carer support workers can use in their local contexts to engage with families with caring responsibilities in order to improve the resilience of the household and mitigate the negative impacts of caring in the households. The project was coordinated by MTÜ Eesti Omastehooldus and developed by a diverse partnership of NGOs working with older persons and their carers in Portugual (CASO50+), Italy (Anziani e non solo), Slovenia (Spominčica /Forget-me-not - Alzheimer Slovenia) and Co-Creation Support CLG (Ireland). The expert partner, is the Greek Association of Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders (Alzheimer Hellas).For professionals and stakeholders, we expect an increased consciousness of how providing care can impact on the whole family and the capacity to use this deeper understanding to improve and innovate their services, including through the introduction of narrative techniques. On local stakeholders and communities, we expect an increased awareness of the challenges of caring at societal level and on innovative experiences and practices carried out in other countries that could be of inspiration for new policies and services. We also expect increased openness towards other European countries and cultures, increased awareness of the importance to adopt a whole-family approach and an increased awareness about the contribution of the European Union activities towards the support to informal carers. In whole, the expectations were met and the innovative approach created momentum for different interventions in favor of family carers.