<< Objectives >>We intend to provide youth workers with the skills needed to engage the young persons they work with in research to make it more participatory, action-focused and participant-led, and ultimately more suitable to inform policy-making at all levels of governance. This becomes particularly important when policy, research and practice aim to support at risk of marginalization groups which still largely remain under the radar, such as young carers (YCs), on which the project will focus.<< Implementation >>The project intends to develop, test and disseminate a training programme and methods aiming to upskill youth workers and enable themto contribute to the development of evidence-based policies in support of young carers at all levels of governance via participatory research and policy-consultation mechanisms involving the young people they work with.<< Results >>A) One multi-language (EN-IT-GR-FR), piloted and evaluated learning course of core-competencies needed by youth workers to contribute to research and policy around young carers, together with a guide for its replication by other providers B) A MOOC to reach out to more learners and stakeholders across EuropeC) A co-developed policy reccomendation report on how to promote the engagement of youth workers in policy and research

The Greek Carers Network EPIONI in collaboration with the Panhellenic Association for Psychosocial Rehabilitation and Vocational Rehabilitation (PEPSAEE), Eurocarers, Care Alliance Ireland and La Compagnie des Aidants, to mark the completion of the Erasmus + KA2 learn4carers project has developed a good practice guide for supporting informal carers. The guide is available at www.learn4carers.eu, in Greek, English and French.Owing to the excellent cooperation of institutions from Greece, Belgium, France, Ireland, Cyprus, Italy and the United Kingdom, the “Learn for Carers in Europe” project (Learn4Carers) provided opportunities for1) The organisations involved, to exchange information on good practices in supporting caregivers.2) Exchange of information regarding the support services for informal carers.3) Dissemination of information to professionals supporting informal carers.4) Increasing communities’ awareness of the issues facing informal carers.5) Development of proposals regarding the support of informal carers on local as well as at European level.The project lasted 24 months, from December 2018 to November 2020Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, two in situ meetings were held in Athens, and Dublin (2019) and the rest were held virtually.Focus Group Interviews with informal carers, professionals and policymakers.Mapping of caregivers needs and good practices was done by the use of questionnaires and electronic forms. Information campaigns were conducted with the support of the office of the European Parliament in Greece (Caring for Carers 2019 and Caring for Carers 2020)The Website (www.learn4carers.eu) and Social Media (Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin) with information material will remain active for five years after the end of the project and will be available n three different languages. The Video messages from MEPs on the role which informal carers play in the sustainability of national health systems will be available on EPIONI youtube channel. The video for the dissemination of the project is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1Zf2ppU-3M&t=3sAs interest in the topic of family carers is growing rapidly in Europe we accordingly included as partner Eurocarers, the European umbrella association working with carers. This European network representing informal carers and their 67 organisations in EU Member States and beyond supported the project by sharing information on the European policy agenda, due to their representation, actively supported by the European Parliament and disseminating our exchange of best practices in a European level.Our associated partner EUFAMI promoted the project at an EU level. EPIONI as the lead partner is a dynamic organisation of caregivers from Greece with practical experience supporting caregivers. It was the first time that EPIONI was involved as coordinator in an Erasmus+ KA2 project. Despite the challenges of the project we managed to navigate the respective complexities and difficulties successfully.

Young carers are children and young persons under 18 providing significant or substantial care, assistance or support to family members who have a disability, suffer from chronic illness, mental health problem or other condition connected with a need for care. They assume a level of responsibility that would usually be associated with an adult. Young carers 18-24 years old are referred to as young adult carers. Although there are no data available for all countries involved in the partnership, we know that the phenomenon is wide-spread. For example, according to statistics 6,2% of German teenagers provide care for a ill family member, 7% of Italians 15-24 years older are young carers. In Scotland, 4.33% of the total number of young people aged between 16 and 24 identified themselves as carers. On the other hand, when surveying in schools among students living with parents with some kind of chronic illness or disabilities, figures in Italy reached almost 20% of students. Young carers undertake a wide range of caring roles and responsibilities, including emotional support, personal care, housework and household budgeting. While research has found that caring can result in positive impacts, there is a relatively strong body of evidence on the adverse impact of caring on health outcomes, social activity, educational engagement and employment opportunities for young carers (e.g. Aldridge, 2008; Becker, 2007). As such, children who live with and care for parents or other family members who are ill or disabled may require support in their capacity as children and/or as young carers.Young carers are still very much invisible. On one hand, significant proportion of young carers have not disclosed their caring responsibilities to their school, they are no more likely to be in contact with social services than are their peers, and only a minority have had an assessment of their needs or been informed about sources of help (Barnardo’s, 2006; Dearden and Becker, 2004; The Children’s Society, 2013). On the other hand, many families do not recognise their children as ‘carers’ (Smyth et al., 2011), some children do not recognise or identify with the role, and there can be a degree of reluctance, even anxiety, among families in disclosing caring responsibilities.Building on this information, the TOGETHER project aims to support social inclusion and engagement of young carers in DE-OS-IT-GR and UK by helping young carers and professionals to adopt a whole family approach, where: members of the household (including the care-recipient) are encouraged to communicate openly about the illness and caring; the condition of the care-recipients are explained clearly to the younger members of the family; helping relationship building within the family; professionals are encouraged to take a whole-family approach when working with care-recipients. The TOGETHER project intends to reach this aims by developing, testing and dissemination three intellectual outputs: (1) awareness rising material to inform children and adults about how important is to cooperate and be supportive with each other when there is a caring responsibility in the family - IO1 (2) a training workshop curriculum for young carers and their families, to support the creation of an open dialogue about the illness / condition of the care recipient, the impact on the young persons and how the whole family can respond to this - IO2 (3) an e-learning programme for professionals about how to promote a whole family approach for young carers and how to replicate the workshop elaborated in IO3.Our ultimate goal is to have an impact on families where there are caring responsibilities and where there is a young member, in order to prevent / reduce negative impacts on him/her, as well as improving his/her well-being, social inclusion and community engagementAll partners involved in the proposal are organizations with solid backgrounds of work with and for young informal carers. All of the partners have also been working with or researching young carers and the issues that affect them.The coordinator is DWBS from Germany, while partners are ANS (Italy), EUROCARERS (BE), Carers Trust (UK) and EDRA (GR).

Dementia has become a high priority in the 21st century as OECD estimates 9.6 million people live with some type of dementia in EU countries and WHO reports the economic costs of dementia to be higher than the expenditure in cancer, heart diseases or depression. The support and care for dementia patients has been delivered by public and private health sectors, but there is also a great number of informal caregivers (family, friends, neighbours or other relative who provide care for a patient, usually at home) who take this role on their own – more than 15% of people aged 50 refers to have taken care of an older person. Although informal caregivers, also called carers or family caregivers, feel benefits from caring, such as increased self-esteem, society has not yet been able to tackle its disadvantages – difficulties on balancing work and caring, burnout and stress, drop-out from labour market, increased risk of poverty and social exclusion. There is a need for interventions with informal caregivers, providing them with effective support. This support has been reached over the years throughout training programmes, psychoeducational programmes, support groups and mutual aid groups, information-technology based support or other formal approaches delivered by healthcare professionals.Mutual aid (or support) groups are being more and more used with dementia caregivers to support them dealing with the disease and ease up their burden and stress. Mutual aid groups are commonly associated with several benefits, including mental and social well-being, by increasing self-confidence, resilience and knowledge. Mutual aid groups are a powerful opportunity for non-formal learning, as they help caregivers cope with difficulties, by sharing of experiences, interaction with peers, building connection and affectivity. Nevertheless, it seems that caregivers have not yet considered mutual aid groups as a priority. One possibility can be the lack of information about the advantages of the participation on a mutual aid groups, as well as the recognition of what it really stands for. The organisations who provides this type of psychosocial interventions also feel that absent in mutual aid groups might be due to lack of opportunity to participate (no other person to take care of patient, far distance, …). In this sense, «ICT Tools can support the social integration of carers, provide them with social, emotional and peer support, facilitate their participation in aspects of life outside the home and thus supporting carers’ quality of life» (Eurocarers, 2016).The CARE4DEM project aimed to develop a new and innovative model of mutual aid groups which promotes caregivers’ involvement by introducing web-based tools and integrating it with other type of interventions, in order to enhance caregivers’ satisfaction with care and reduce burnout. It also intended to expand the professional development of mutual aid groups’ facilitators by recognizing and developing their skills creating a network for mutual and peer learning across Europe. The specific objectives were: 1-Design and develop a new and innovative web-based model of mutual aid groups for informal caregivers of people with dementia, to enhance caregivers’ satisfaction with care and reduce burnout, including learning materials for caregivers; 2-Identify the suitable profile and competences to perform the facilitator role of mutual aid groups; 3-Develop a multimedia training course to enhance the competences of mutual aid groups’ facilitators to perform a better role and address caregivers’ needs; 4-Pilot a web-based mutual aid group model to support informal caregivers to better care of their relative, including the training courses for facilitators; 5-Create a network of professionals across Europe who work towards better informal caregivers of people with dementia.The project has involved over 2000 persons, including: informal carers, academic and professionals experts, professionals willing to experiment the model, professionals interested in getting to know more about the model and policy makers. On the completion of project, we have contributed to reach the following results: 1-Enhanced competences of mutual aid groups’ facilitators participating to the project, taking evidence from the comparison on the initial, ongoing and final self-assessment; 2-Increased number of organisations and/or professionals implementing mutual aid groups for dementia caregivers, with at least 6 professionals taking part of the piloting per country; 3-Increased number of caregivers attending mutual aid groups, with at least 1 group for 6 caregivers per country; 4-Enhanced caregivers’ satisfaction with care and reduce caregivers’ burnout, taking evidence from the effectiveness assessment.After the project, we expect a rise in the implementation of web-based mutual aid groups as the outputs will be available and the process mapping is described in the step-by-step implementation guide.