INNOVAGE is a three year project dedicated to social innovations which support active and healthy ageing. The project will develop and test, as well as survey and catalogue, social innovation that will have a solid impact on improving the quality of life and well-being of older people. In particular the project aims to make a major contribution to the EU Horizon 2020 goal of extending healthy life years.
The project’s objectives directly address the current major barriers to innovation and to the achievement of the extension of healthy life years across the EU.
INNOVAGE aims to achieve impact in the public, private and third sectors and is built on the closest possible partnership with end users and stakeholders, including older people themselves.
Its key outputs will be four new major social innovations in different EU countries and a new European platform to promote the sustainable implementation of social innovations to promote well-being in later life. Among these four social innovations, one is explicitly thought for supporting informal carers.
In fact, informal carers provide unpaid care, as well as practical and psychological support to dependent family member or friend. Carers’ life is influenced gradually in different ways experiencing physical, psychological and financial burden.
In recent years, their role has been recognised worldwide, but still there are countries where legislation does not support carers. Moreover, in many EU member states very few contents and services for informal carers are currently available on-line: it is clear that the potential of the web are not yet exploited in all countries.
Indeed, a specific social innovation within the INNOVAGE project aims at developing a multilingual web platform addressing the most relevant informal carers’ needs, to be implemented in all 27 EU member states with both common and national-specific services. The platform include not only contents related to caregiving activities and coping strategies, but also interactive tools allowing informal carers and other target groups (i.e. care professionals and employers of working carers) to communicate, share their experiences and support each other.
INRCA, the Italian National Institute of Health and Science on Aging, and EUROCARERS, a non-profit organization with a EU scope of supporting carers, are main partners for the development, implementation and dissemination of the web platform.
Dissemination plan of the web platform initiates early in the lifetime of the project with the motivation of Eurocarers member organizations network. Users feedback is requested in all stages of development and design, investigating carers needs, user- friendliness, graphic design, contents development, sustainability and other dimensions.
Web platform will be disseminated in all EU member states. Presentation and training of the web platform to carers, care professionals and employers is part of main dissemination plan. Scheduled activities include EU and national events with representatives of Eurocarers member organisations, users and relevant stakeholders.
Go to the main INNOVAGE project website