Taking into account the proposal for a Council Recommendation on Vocational Education and Training for Sustainable Competitiveness, Social Equity and Resilience and the updated European Skills Agenda, the Osnabrück Declaration focuses on four key areas for the years 2021 to 2025:
- Resilience and excellence through quality, inclusive and flexible VET
- Creating a new culture for lifelong learning – relevance of continuing education and digitalisation
- Sustainability – a green link to VET
- European education and training area and international vocational education and training
With this project we contribute to these objectives to a greater or lesser extent. Our two focuses within our project are mainly on 1 and 2. Through this project we upscale the digital skills of teachers and trainers in both the formal and non-formal sector so that they are able to develop qualitative interactive online teaching modules that contribute to a culture of lifelong learning. The developed modules focus on the theme of dementia in society. By doing so, we improve the quality of the existing care training programmes in the formal VET and the training programmes in the nonformal sector and adapt them to the increasing demand from society for quality education on this theme. This is necessary in order to detect the condition in people at an early stage and to provide them with high-quality care and support.
On its website, the WHO identifies a lack of awareness and knowledge about dementia, which is widespread in many countries. The partners within this project consortium fully endorse this observation.
The prevalence of dementia is escalating worldwide and knowledge deficits remain a barrier to community inclusiveness and quality care. The need for quality, comprehensive education has been identified as a key priority for global action plans on dementia. In the fight against Alzheimer’s disease, early recognition of this condition is extremely important. The online material we are developing is focused on the one hand on recognising the disorder and experiencing it, and on the other hand on the care that people with dementia need in their day-to-day lives.
At the end of this project, 24 expert teachers/trainers from the formal and non-formal sector will have upgraded their digital skills. Indirectly, there will be more people involved, because the 24 who are directly involved will spread the word within their own organisation.
3 modules will be developed.
A first module will deal with the dementia condition: issues such as What is dementia?, What are the symptoms? Different forms of dementia, Stages of dementia, Observing and understanding changing behaviour, Improving day-to-day functioning of people with dementia, Environmental impact on people with dementia, Dealing with changing behaviour, approaches and communication in dementia will be addressed.
A second module will deal with the necessary care, support and guidance for people with dementia in their home environment and in a care facility.
A final module will be about empowerment; with this module we want to achieve that people with dementia are seen and addressed to their full potential, within the context of this project by their family caregivers and their caregivers but by extension not only in care but also in society. The development of this material will ensure that care training in the formal VET sector and training in the informal sector can respond to the increasing demand for people with prior knowledge of dementia.
