Handling MultiCulturality in Care
Start date: Sep 1, 2014,
End date: Aug 31, 2017
PROJECT
FINISHED
The project “Handling MultiCulturality in Care” aims to improve working environment in workplaces involved in caretaking of elderly: Although it is not the direct objective of this project European citizens in need of care will also benefit from this as it will improve the quality of the services offered to them. There is today a growing proportion of caretakers, who are of different ethnic background. It creates some challenges within a discipline where values, attitudes and communication are very important to the work environment and to the user-experience. Most European countries are lacking ways to strengthen employees' ability to manage multicultural workplaces. Furthermore, the project partners' experience that there are special circumstances in the care sector, which impedes the acquisition of new skills. Professor Dominique Bouchet from the Department of Marketing and Management at the University of Southern Denmark has for many years done research in cultural differences in workplaces, and he has developed educational material for employees in the integration sector. The material consists of videos, description of small cases and questions for group discussions etc. that supports a dialogue about the caretakers daily activities and these activities relation to more general values.
It is intended that this teaching material will be the inspirational source to adapt training programmes especially dedicated for the employees in the Caresector.
The project's aim is to strengthen nursing staff skills in managing different value systems in so called "Care Groups" and also to strengthen the nursing staff ability to communicate with people, who receive Careservices. So the target group for this project is the nursing staff in nursing homes or engaged with nursing people in their own homes.
The operational objectives of the project are:
1) Caregivers have achieved new key competences in connection with discussions of value systems in relation to their current and future needs
2) Employees perceive that they have been presented with new methods employees experience that opens their readiness to learn in the future
3) To adjust and evaluate new teaching methods to support improvements in formal and informal vocational education and training systems
4) In general, to be better to deal with cultural differences and create a greater readiness in relation to changes in the cultural maps on their job.
5) Facilitating adjustment within the care sectors vocational training through the transfer of knowledge and experience.
6) Improving the interaction between vocational training with learning in practice in different national contexts .
7) Improve the effect in everyday work situations by putting together a curriculum with an interaction between workplace and school
The consortium is structured so it involves a care organization and an educational institution from Germany, Italy, UK and Denmark. In addition, LederForum Denmark participates as coordinator and external facilitator of the project results. This external communication occurs through the European organization EDE, representing leaders and providers of continuing care for the elderly. This organizational form is chosen because it creates an opportunity to test the developed educational materials in four different contexts, and thus test the developed materials general applicability to the caresector.
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