Online educational courses: Addressing the loneliness and social exclusion of elderly
The aim of online educational courses is to reduce the loneliness of the elderly and people with dementia and their social exclusion, while at the same time educating both family members and professional caregivers on how to avoid burnout. Courses also heavily promote new profession of companion care. We teach how to communicate with a person with dementia, present meaningful activities for elderly and people with dementia etc.
Cross-border/international
Slovenia
Italy
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It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
Yes
ERASMUS
We received the grants:
EIT Health (RIS Innovation Call) (2020)
Erasmus+ KA2, small partnerships (2022)
Grant from Slovenian ministry for culture (European Regional development fund), 2022
No
Yes
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Gen Studio, Damjana Pangerčič s.p. Type of organisation: For-profit company First name of representative: Damjana Last name of representative: Pangerčič Gender: Female Nationality: Slovenia Function: Director Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Žabjek 10 Town: Podbočje Postal code: 8312 Country: Slovenia Direct Tel:+386 41 972 893 E-mail:damjana@sil-way.com Website:https://sil-way.com/
The aim of our initiative/company is to reduce the loneliness of the elderly and people with dementia and their social exclusion, while at the same time educating both family members and professional caregivers on how to avoid burnout. Until now the social needs of the elderly have been extremely neglected:
- EU: 22,2 million people aged 65+ requires companion care (assistance with ADLs (activities of daily living): companionship, medication reminders, light housekeeping, shopping, transportation)
- EU: Almost 1/2 of people aged 65+ with long-term care needs have an unmet need for companion care
- EU: 10,5 million are people living with dementia
- EU: more than 30% of elders live alone and 23% of them reported feeling lonely frequently (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA))
- Many studies show that loneliness is connected with the following health risks: depression, physical problems, mental decline, higher mortality rates (US National Institute on Aging)
- Caregiving has all the features of a chronic stress experience; it creates physical and psychological strain over extended periods of time and is accompanied by high levels of unpredictability and uncontrollability (Vitaliano et al., 2003).
On long term we would like to become leading EU and US provider of:
• online courses for formal (institutions: elderly care homes, home care agencies) and informal carers (family members) of care-dependent elderly which is covering education in the field of:
- soft skills of carers (addressing the social needs of elderly)
- comprehensive treatment of the elderly and people with dementia which preserves their independence and dignity (Montessori method for elderly and people with dementia)
- protective measures against burnout of carers
• Create a line of physical board games and puzzles that will be adapted to the needs of the elderly and people with dementia (we have already developed two own physical board games).
Loneliness of elderly/people with dementia
Dignity of elderly
Burnout of carers
Online education courses covering social needs of eldely
Profession: companion care
Our competition currently consists of online courses offered mainly by: universities, expert institutions for dementia, online learning platforms, consultants which are focused on:
- the care for people with dementia
- explanation of Montessori method for elderly and people with dementia
There are no online courses where the important focus would be on social needs of elderly (companion care, independence).
Most of education in the field of social care is still given live.
If we want to importantly raise the number of people being trained in this field we need to offer quality online courses which have the ability to attract more people and this also lowers CO2 which is produced if learners are using transport to attend the live lectures.
With our online courses we would like to become an example of good practice, which shows that:
- courses can be hold online (lowering CO2)
- reach a large amount of interested public (formal and informal carers)
- promote heavily the relatively new profession of companion care.
We will massively online advertise in order to reach as much of interested public as possible and to motivate also some potential people who will realize through our content that they are interested in the profession of social worker.
Courses will be designed by a team of experienced digital experts who have achieved significant marketing successes on global markets.
Online community will be built which will enable learners to share experiences among each other.
Creators of the current online courses are mainly institutions which are not very commercially oriented, don’t have staff/knowledge to outsource online marketing activities/build internal marketing team.
- courses can have quality/motivating content
Team will held a lot of meetings online to avoid usage of transport and when meeting in offices we will mainly use public transport.
Quality of experience:
To guarantee the online courses to be quality and appealing:
- they will be designed by a team of experienced digital experts who have achieved significant marketing successes on global markets (digital strategy and SEO expert, expert in design and marketing of online courses, social media advertising expert, expert for public and online speaking).
- Online community will be built round the courses which will enable learners to share experiences among each other.
Content provided in our courses importantly upgrades the competences of people working in social care and family members. It also heavily promotes almost new profession of companion care – our content is focused on social needs of elderly, which is a topic which is extremely poorly covered in existing curriculums in school system in the field of social care.
Online courses will be covering three important topics:
How to make good contact with elderly:
- soft skills training
- usage of different activities for strengthening of cognition (presented will be games and puzzles which are freely accessible on market)
- Cognitive Stimulation Therapy training: an evidence-based cognitive & psychosocial intervention offering mentally stimulating and enjoyable activities to people with cognitive decline/dementia.
Montessori method for elderly and people with dementia:
Method focuses on supporting elderly or person with dementia: activities with meaning and purpose are put back into people's lives, based on their needs, interests, skills and abilities.
How to empower yourself to help others
Teaching various methods that have been scientifically proven to help successfully cope with burnout and stress: Art workshop, Mindfulness, Me with others, My sources of power.
In courses the knowledge will be supported by scenes which will be filmed at work in practice, so learners will have very plastic feeling how the knowledge can be applied in practice.
We are offering education (online courses) focused on social needs of elderly and people with dementia – till now this topic almost hasn´t been covered and also not offered online in the format which would be really appealing, practical and affordable.
Quality content is therefore accessible to all interested public, and moreover it can motivate also additional people to think and start the career in social care sector. Eventually we would like to be present in the majority of EU countries with our courses (content can be easily translated to whichever language, but marketing efforts (investments) and business cooperations take more time).
We will offer 1h free educational course about companion care, which offers basic knowledge and insight into this profession/work. The intention is to motivate as many people as possible to start thinking to do this work, whether part time or as a full career option. All other courses will be charged, but there will be different and differently priced courses offered to B2C customers and to B2B customers.
This kind of profession is also especially convenient for: lower educated women, immigrants, younger retired people, students and jobless people as it doesn´t require special education or certification.
• demand for home care will exceed supply and by 2060 it is predicted that for instance in Germany there will be lack of 400 000 caregivers. Immigrants are seen as a plausible answer to this problem. There are significant flows of care workers from low- and middle-income countries to high-income countries within Europe (Stone R. Long-term care workforce shortages: impact on families. San Francisco, Family Caregiver Alliance, 2001).
• Due to more companion care help offered on the market, women will be relieved of family caregiving obligations and could focus on their professional career. Around the world, caregiving responsibilities within families disproportionally fall on female family members.
- Intense promotion of profession of companion care (this is the profession which addresses the most intensively the social needs of care-dependent elderly). This profession is in general public currently almost unknown, but the content of this profession is covered by informal carers (family members) and partially also by help received in the scope of social care services – the problem is that the approach to companion care activities is very poor and can be significantly improved if carers receive the appropriate knowledge through our courses. RESULT: empowerment of carers with new knowledge.
Currently none of existing online courses addresses specifically the contents connected with companion care, neither are these topics covered in curriculums of educational systems in the field of social care. In particular, companion care is also suitable for less educated women, immigrants, students, younger retired people, jobless people as the work does not require formal or certified education. RESULT: new profession suitable for vulnerable groups.
- Strengthening of the reputation of professions in the field of social care: upgrade of the competences of social workers in the field of soft skills, comprehensive treatment of care- dependent elderly and protection against burnout. Upgraded competences will affect the salary and better working conditions in the professions of social care which are mostly covered by women. RESULT: eventually the working conditions in the field of social care will improve.
- Empowerment of informal caregivers (family members) with soft skills knowledge so that they will communicate more correctly with the elderly, to lower the conflicts and misunderstandings. RESULT: access to the knowledge for family members who have had, till now, almost no opportunities for such learning.
In development of our two physical board games for elderly and people with dementia (intended for their bigger social inclusion) and creation of online courses are included:
Damjana Pangerčič, director of Gen Studio, Damjana Pangerčič s.p./applicant: project leader of both initiatives/activities of the company (games and courses).
Samira Lah (co-founder of the company/applicant), a psychologist (MA) and pedagogue. She acts as a main content developer of the games and contents of the online courses.
Meta Rojšek Breznik, occupational therapist (nursing home). She helped at testing of our games in nursing homes in Slovenia.
Value Add Games: company specialized in development of physical board games on demand. This company helped us at development of mechanics of both games.
University of Novo mesto, Faculty of Health Sciences: expert consulting from the field of occupational therapy
Monika Klobčar: illustrations and graphic design for games.
Martina Štuhec: pedagogue - in the last 5 years she has been working in the field of companion care (full time). She is our lead lecturer in the field of companion care (and montessori method in the future).
Institute Cene Štupar: Slovenian provider of lifelong learning programs – as they are a provider of national professional qualification for social care worker, they were the ones with whom we were checking the quality and concept of our courses with the help of students and professors.
Danish company Brain+: company developing online cognitive trainings for eldely – they were our partner in Erasmus+ project when we were upgrading content for our online courses, together with Institute Cene Štupar.
Marko Preradovič: Co-founder of the company, an expert in creation and marketing of online courses.
Matevž Fatur: an expert for customer journey on the webpage and leads creation.
Luka Lavriša: SEO (search engine optimization) expert.
Nika Urbas: public and online speaking expert.
Educators/experts in the field of elderly care: co-founder Samira is a psychologist with specialized knowledge from dementia field - she and our another co-worker Martina (a companion care professional) serve as main lecturers in video courses. Additionally we have also lecturers with a bit smaller role in the courses, like occupational therapist Meta, who works with people with dementia in a Slovenian nursing home.
Educational institutions: they help us lift the courses to highest level possible - University of Novo mesto, Faculty of Health Sciences and Institute Cene Štupar (provider of national professional qualification for social care worker). Both helped us to get in contact with their students and professors - their feedback and our lecturing there, helped us additionally improve our content for educational online courses. Our management team and lecturers (and digital team joined intensively in the last quarter of the year) intensively worked together during last year (Samira hold lectures which are now part of the online courses at the Institute Cene Štupar for 3 months, Martina, our second lecturer, management team and partially digital team were present at all Samira´s lectures in order to actively listen and analyze the feedbacks from students and professors on the content of the lectures).
Companies with special expertise: within the project Erasmus+ we cooperated with Danish company Brain+ which specializes in the development of digital tools and games for cognitive stuimulation of elderly. This is therefore the complementary field to ours - we found a lot of common interests and will in future most probably join forces and be further developing and introducing the method Cognitive Stimulation Therapy to the market.
Marketing and video/design experts: we have digital and SEO experts in the team and people who are specialized in the design of online courses.
ADDED VALUE: more quality online courses (interdisciplinary work)
Our online courses are addressing the social needs of elderly:
- INNOVATIVE CONTENT, PUT INTO VIDEO FORMAT: Montessori method for elderly and cognitive stimulation therapy are two most important contents/methods which are part of our online courses and they are currently very poorly represented in the form of online courses and also in live education formats (but these two methods are proven to be very efficient and receive excellent feedbacks worldwide from the users who have already learned these methods).
- more quality course design with filmed cases from practice will successfully attract the attention of the learner and “force” him/her to finish the course
INNOVATIVENESS: courses from competitors (faculties, institutes etc.) do not follow the rules of quality online course design and very rarely contain filmed cases from practice, which would show the learners how to implement the gained knowledge.
- courses will be massively online advertised in order to reach as much of interested public as possible and to motivate also some potential people who will realize through our content that they are interested in the profession of social worker.
INNOVATIVENESS: Innovative is the marketing approach to enter the market – we have in our team online course design expert, SEO expert, social media advertising and social strategy expert.
- educators in the course are big experts and they will be skilled in the presentation of content in online course format.
INNOVATIVENESS: public and online speaking expert will be preparing the lecturers to pass the knowledge in online courses.
Physical board games intended for cognitive training of elderly and people with dementia.
INNOVATIVENESS: Adapted content (games are based on strengthening of communication and speech with very simple rules). Adapted design (bigger cards, figures, font size).
We were testing our educational content in the field of companion care and social needs of elderly with students and professors of social care (at the Slovenian Institute Cene Štupar, provider of national professional qualification for social care worker) within Erasmus+ project – the intent was to be confident we developed right and quality content which is well received by students and professors. In partnership with Institute Cene Štupar we upgraded and adapted the contents to the needs of market. Then we put this content in the form of first online courses. We just launched the webpage with these course on Slovenian market and prepared also the English version of it, with which we are testing the EU market – however, the goal is to first enter the Italian market and then proceed according to the feedbacks from market.
Whole concept of online courses offering education in the field of social needs of elderly and their bigger independence is meant to be spread all over European countries eventually and we also plan to enter USA market. Courses will be transformed into the local language – later on we will find local experts from local markets with whom we will form partnerhips and they will be passing on the knowledge in their country via online courses (because they are locals, they enjoy greater trust from local customers).
These courses are intended for family members and for different types of social care workers. First, we are focusing on the creation of online courses which are targeting family members, as they are the group that is most malnourished with practical information on how to care for elderly family members.
In the next step of development, we will focus also on more demanding online courses created for social care professionals (home care agencies and elderly care homes).
One of our main missions is also promotion of comapnion care profession for which there is a great need on the market, but the offer is still very weak.
We were first developing board games for elderly and people with dementia in our startup – then we discovered that we are actually solving just a little piece of a much bigger problem – which is the loneliness and social exclusion of elderly and people with dementia.
In next step, we made a global research in this area (and already before we were quite familiar with the problem, because we were actively doing the research due to the development of games, exhibiting on fairs and testings of products in real environments – so lots of information about real challenges on the market). We discovered that there is almost no attention (wheter in educational system or elsewhere) put on the social needs of elderly. If there exist some quality material in this field, it is offered to a very limited audience – as already described, quality online courses are usually offered by universities or institutes, which don´t market this content to wide audiences and especially not to family members of care dependent elderly.
Our conclusion was that there is a great need for the knowledge about how to approach social needs of elderly both among family members of care dependent elderly and among professional carers.
Through the Erasmus+ project (where we were the leading partner) we have, with the help of partner Cene Štupar (a provider of national professional qualification for social care worker) developed and upgraded the content of the courses to such an extent (feedback from students and ex-students who know the practical conditions very well helped us a lot) that we are currently launching them on the Slovenian market, and at the same time a version of the website with the courses is also ready in English. Our most important professional collaborators in the creation of content are: our co-founder, psychologist and pedagogue Samira lah and Martina Štuhec who practices companionship to elderly and people with dementia as a profession (full time job).
The situation in:
- the field of loneliness of the elderly, their social needs
- the lack of content that puts the social needs of the elderly in the foreground in the educational system of social care and
- problems with high burnout rates of carers
are a pressing problem at the global level, as shown by the data below:
- EU: 22,2 million people aged 65+ requires companion care (assistance with ADLs: activities of daily living)
- EU: Almost 1/2 of people aged 65+ with long-term care needs have an unmet need for companion care
- USA: 20.7% of adults 85+ need help with ADLs (2016 National Health Interview Survey)
- USA: 15 million patients receive home health care
- EU: 10,5 million of people living with dementia, in USA 7 million of people
- EU: more than 30% of elders live alone and 23% of them reported feeling lonely frequently (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA)), in USA 28% of seniors live alone and 43% of seniors reported feeling lonely regularly (USA AARP, 2018)
- 40% of caregivers felt emotionally stressed and about 20% felt physically strained (National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP Public Policy Institute survey).
As already described we developed educational online courses in Slovenia, with slovenian experts and partners, but challenges which we are addressing in our courses are global and don´t differ among countries.
See our 5-min introduction video on the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVCpd3sRSCs
Development plan of our intiative:
In the past 4 years we received grants for the development of games for elderly (Slovenian grant P2 for startups, EIT RIS Innovation Call) and in year 2022 we received Erasmus+ KA2 grant and Slovenian grant from Ministry of culture for development of educational courses about companion care).
In January 2023 we launched webpage sil-way.si (slovenian version) and sil-way.com (english version) with free online educational course about companion care – this course contains useful and very practical oriented content (how to communicate with a person with dementia, meaningful activities for elderly and people with dementia) for family caregivers and for professional caregivers to elderly.
The goal of a free course is:
- to make awareness about the importance of companion care and social needs of elderly
- to motivate people for a new profession: to become companions to elderly and people with dementia
During the year we plan to work on this following activities:
- February: test online marketing of slovenian and english webpage with courses + we will be disseminating through our partners the free course (Institute Cene Štupar, Social Chamber of Slovenia, Alzheimer Association Slovenia, certain municipalities in Slovenia etc.). The goal is to intensively learn from feedbacks of the first viewers.
- March: introduction of a payable course about companion care in Slovenia + SEO optimization of webpages (which then needs to be done on continuous basis)
- April: entering the Italian market (intense online marketing (FB, google ads, you tube tactics))
- May-September: upgrade of digital marketing activities, work on customer support, development of lead magnets (free online brochures, free coloring books for elderly, free advices…) on Slovenian and Italian market.
- September-December: introduction of upgraded virsion of payabale course
