"Family Skills project is based on a clear need identified during the planning and design of the intervention activities, of a lack of actions to support positive parenting, based on scientific evidence and innovative learning methodologies, which are considered necessary in the asset of parenting skills. Through an analysis of the needs carried out by the consortium, it emerged that parenting skills, at a socio-political level, have been strictly empathised in cases of high risk, while there is no common strategy and concept of prevention of discomfort, which is based on a strengthening of parenting skills, especially with respect to new parents and new families.In order to overcome these difficulties, the Family Skills project foresees a specific support and training action addressed to public and private operators (as adult educators) called to organize and manage training courses of parenting skills, and to sensitise parents' orientation and motivation to participate.It seems necessary to review the structure and provision of parental and adult educator-training/education, foreseeing cutting-edge solutions, thanks to the use of digital technologies and innovative tools; for this motivation, the training material will be realized for a full online usability, that includes the use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) techniques: these training delivery techniques have proved to be, according to the scientific literature of the last years, much more effective in terms of achieving learning outcomes, for being experiential, immersive and influencing the individual's training.Specifically, the objectives of the Family Skills project are:- To help adults (parents, family members, social workers) to acquire the necessary skills to become effective educators;- To support parents in their children's education through learning pathways and empowerment of parental skills (but also of educators, teachers, and adults in general), characterized by interactive and innovative educational kits, which use virtual and immersive reality to foster skills development.- Increasing awareness and knowledge of the needs and development of children and families through audio-visuals and ICT materials, with particular emphasis on virtual reality as a tool for experiential learning.- To promote a public-private network ability of collaboration, to support parenthood through training, social and relational networking, also through the diffusion of self-organizing family models.Directing the results towards these objectives will allow to improve the parenting skills, the so called ""Family Skills"", through an active involvement of parents' groups and, at the same time, strengthening the personal and professional skills of those working in the educational sector. For this motivation our partnership, composed of public and private bodies from Italy, Romania, Belgium and Poland, through the project Family Skills intends to develop 3 intellectual outputs that consist in: the development of guidelines to design the training, aimed at the analysis of new training needs of the operators; in the implementation of a training path integrated with virtual reality and an exercise, through an active ""participation"" of the group of parents that exploits the interaction of the individuals, such as ""partner works"" specific and other activities addressed to the participant needs. The project idea also includes the use of a self-assessment tool, about individual Family Skills, through a digital interface tool. The project aims find a synthesis in an on-site experimentation that involves a group of parents (about 30) from each country, designed and implemented by the operators who will take part in a specific training."

Background Throughout Europe, informal carers cover 80% of long-term care. Family members are the largest care providers for older, frail, disabled and chronically ill people of all ages. However, caring for a loved one often comes with a considerable personal cost to family carers, including many financial, professional, health and social consequences. Most of informal carers are at risk of social exclusion and there is a need to help them to move from social isolation to active participation. As having unpaid caregiving responsibilities is often undervalued, there is also a need to raise informal carers' profile for themselves, and also for the society as a whole, by developing and validating the large set of skills that are required to be an informal carer. Main objective the CareEr project aims at empowering informal carers through a new training device created by and for informal carers. Based on three areas of key competences and self-assessment, CareEr will contribute to improve informal carers' condition as well as the quality of informal care. Description of activities First of all, the capital letter E of 'CareEr' stands for 'Engaging' and 'Empowering' informal carers. in total, 105 informal carers from 7 EU countries will participate in the CareEr project. Some of them will be engaged in local focus groups and 7 of them (one per participating country) will travel to Belgium, Greece and Italy to make their voice heard during the co-development phase of the CareEr training device. Empowerment also stems from the knowledge and competences that they will gain through their participation in three tailor-made training modules conducted by qualified trainers: 12 trainers will take part in a transnational training for trainers in order to enable them to master this new training device. Finally, in the context of free movement between countries, Empowerment will also result from achieving 'mutual recognition of validated skills' in the European labour market. The capital letter E also stands for the 'e-platform' that will be co-designed from the orientation taken in the Strategic focus groups. This new gaming-based virtual tool will contribute to help informal carers to move from isolation to a connected community of European informal carers and therefore, raise their awareness of the fact that they play an important role in the European care sectors. From this e-platform, they will be able to access learning materials in their own language, including e-learning and self-evaluation tools. Finally, CareEr also refers to career prospects that any informal carer should be allowed to have. As such, the CareEr project will support young carers and carers in employment to combine their caregiving responsibilities with their study or their job. For those in unemployment, CareEr will contribute to bridge the gap between the informal and the formal care sector and to increase informal carers work readiness. CareEr will link to previous EU projects and will up-to-date effective skills recognition tools dedicated to informal carers in order to make them more visible and attractive on the labour market. Impact The consortium made of European Civil Society organisations engaged in the care sector, a local authority and a university, aims at delivering innovative training materials including a training tool based on a e-platform enabling informal carers to improve their knowledge and competences. CareEr will contribute to improve the quality of informal care in Europe.

The project had a partnership made of 5 European countries Italy, France, Belgium, Romania and Portugal, and had Fondazione IRPEA from Padua, Italy, as coordinator.The focus of the “DARE” pathway were the services for home assistance as central element to be reformed in the wider context of the assistance to the person, a choice motivated by the conviction that the support the persons in difficulty and their carers might receive at home influences their right to be cared at home, avoiding also the recoveries in residential structures, already not enough compared to the number of requests.The perspective of a change of paradigm in this sector, focused on the a holistic approach regarding the needs and the resources, was confirmed during the whole project. Starting from the obvious lack of dedicated public resources, in most of the European countries, and from the deep changes appeared in the modern families, the project facilitated the approach to very diversified initiatives.The 5 visits for the exchange of best practices – to Bucharest, Brussel, Bastia, Coimbra and Padua – involved 106 available places – but some of the professionals participated to more than one visit. The two internal Focus Groups (in Bucharest and Padua), the Final Workshop (Padua) and the intense exchanges via e-mail between the project coordinators of each partner confirmed that the objective of creating a “community of practice” had been reached: the group will continue to pay attention to the innovation in the sector of home and residential care and will search for opportunities of building projects centered on the transfer of best practices, perhaps also enlarging the partnership to other countries.The diversity of the professional profiles involved was another objective reached (directors and coordinators of organizations associated to the partners, professional educators, healthcare technicians, home assistants, responsible for the communication, occupational therapists, psychologists, physiotherapists, experts from the planning department). In terms of direct impact, the opportunity to participate to one or more visits facilitated a training “on the field” and contributed to the widening of their vision on the utility and the functioning of integrated services, which also imply the rethinking of the necessary competences. Besides, the direct contact with different cultures of approaching care and cure gave them the elements of a necessary intercultural approach.As it emerged from the Observation Form of the Best Practices, filled in by each partner after each visit, TRAINING and CONTINUOUS REQUALIFICATION of the professionals from the different home assistance services, are essential in order to educate them to the vision of the integration of interventions/services meant to improve the quality of life of the assisted persons and to favor the social inclusion process of the disadvantaged persons.Through the continuous dissemination activity, around 36.000 persons were reached, a public made mainly of experts from the third sector at the national and European level, local/national/European stakeholders, professionals from the healthcare and education sector, public institutions.The partnership had started from an initial situation of differentiation both due to the type of organization and to the integration level of the existing services. According to the options expressed by the partners during the final Focus Group, the model of the “integrated desks/CARE HUBS” remains the ideal one needed for a real innovation of the assistance services (domiciliary and non), even if differentiated according to the culture and to the existing legislation of each country.The collection of the 26 best practices in a e-book (available in EPUB and PDF format) allowed a deeper reflection on the models and initiatives observed and the collection of the organizations and the territories involved.The partnership followed the double meaning of the word “DARE”: “to donate”, in Italian, and therefore aim at the quality of life of the persons for whom, as professionals, we are responsible, and “to dare”, in English, as a really sustainable welfare allover Europe, homogenous in terms of quality and quantity, cannot be possible without OVERCOMING the traditional division of the assistance and care services based on “target groups”.Being convinced that that innovation is possible event with small (but strategic) steps, the idea of foreseeing, on more territories, the creation of Integrated Desks for care and assistance (not only domiciliary one) remains an objective to be carried on. The “DARE” project helped the partners also in facing the real dimensions of the needed changes in order to reach, even partly, this objective.