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ELMI - ENHANCING LABOUR MARKET INTEGRATION OF ELDERLY FAMILY CARERS THROUGH SKILLS IMPROVING

Eurocarers define a carer as “a person that looks after family, partners, friends or neighbours in need of help because they are ill, frail or have a disability. The care they provide is unpaid.” In the EU27, 3% of people state that they care for an elderly or disabled relative several times a week, 4% do it once or twice a week and 8% do so less than once a week. Altogether, a quarter of people report being involved in caring for an elderly or disabled relative, amounting to 125 million carers in Europe. Caring, even if for a relative, requires a lot of skills and most of informal carers do not have the chance to attend classes (because of impossibility to leave the care recipient alone, and because in Romania the access to education in rural areas is limited). When the care person dies, the former carer may face the challenges of having been out of the workplace for a while, not being up to date with technology, a lack of confidence, or feel he/she no longer have the skills you once had. However, he/she may have acquired new skills as a carer that may be attractive to potential employers. The ELMI project aims at offering family carers the opportunity to strengthen their skills with an e-learning based course that will be transferred from Italy to Romania and which would give them not only useful information for their informal caring role, but also a solid background to start from when looking for a job in the care field. Moreover, the training acquired in Romania will be recognized in Italy in the framework of ECVET agreement and this could also support a qualified mobility of workers in a sector where the presence of Romanian migrant workers is very relevant (in Italy there are currently over 150.000 Romanian women working as home-caregivers). The project aims also to develop a strategy to support transition from informal to formal care for former carers. The consortium is formed by partners well-known at national level, with a wide experience in working with and training elderly carers, and members of European networks in the elderly care field (Alzheimer Europe, Eurocarers, Age Platform). The main products of the ELMI project will be the e-learning tool adapted to Romania's needs, the on-line platform of resources for family carers, the ECVET agreement between Italy and Romania and the strategy for re-insertion on labour market of family carers. The transferability of the products in Czech Republic and Poland will also be envisaged, as Eastern European countries are lacking training programs for carers. The ELMI project's impact is foreseen regarding the improvement of the family carers' access on the labour market in care professions, the facilitation of carers' access to training programmes using distance learning, the facilitation of migration and transparency of qualifications at European level through the implementation of the ECVET system in the care field, the social policies in supporting labour market re-insertion of care workers.
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