Home
The ageing process of European population has impact not only on the health care field, but also on labour, Vocational and Educational Training (VET) and migration policies and process. The number of elderly people in Greece has increased in the last 10 years and has now reached almost the 19% of the population. 160.000 people are estimated to suffer from Dementia and require a qualified assistance which is currently not sufficiently available to most Greek families.
80% of patients with dementia are cared for at home in Greece, often with the support of informal care workers which normally are migrant women, middle aged, with secondary even tertiary education but without specific training in elderly care sector.
20% of home care workers are migrants (this figures includes only legal migrants): 2/3 comes from the ex-Soviet Union and Bulgaria. Migrant care workers usually cover long work-shifts, are often not regularly employed and/or without work permit, do jobs not related to their educational or professional skills and they are therefore not competent to deal with elderly care needs, especially with those related to the dementia disease (Liapi & Vouyoukas, 2006). This implies, beside a low quality of care service provided which can affect the life quality of the dependent person, also a high risk of burn out, low safety, low employability and career opportunities.
On the other hand, the Greek VET system currently does not offer a training which could fit the needs of this category of workers: flexibility, low cost, no language barriers. As far as the Bulgaria is concerned, while a lot of Bulgarian women still move to Greece to work as care workers lacking of a specific training, the private market of home care service provision is now starting to rise in Bulgaria too, where the social service system is still inadequate to answer to an increasing ageing population.
To answer these needs, the LDV- Tranfer of Innovation project: SET CARE: Self-study E-learning Tool for the Social Home-care Sector intends to transfer in Greece and Bulgaria a training tool (ASPASIA), originally developed in Italy, which provides training on elderly care making use of e-learning. The pedagogical materials, currently available in 7 languages, will be adapted and translated in Greek and Bulgarian.
«This project is funded with support from the European Commission. This website reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.»
