dementia
Empowering Lives, Supporting Affectivity
ELSA intends to explore the use of Web 2.0 to reach two target groups: family and professional caregivers caring for frail elderly people, including those who live with Alzheimer disease and with dementia.
The main aim of ELSA project is to create videos, slides, texts which can give support and information to those (professionals and relatives) caring for frail elderly people.
ELSA addresses the learning needs of professional caregivers working in residential and home care services (nursing homes, assisted living centers, adult care centers, home services, and the like) and of relatives caring for frail older people living at home or in residential care.
The partners made during the first year a multilingual website, collecting the videos and texts produced in the various countries; now the website is interfaced with Facebook and YouTube for creating social networks, open to professionals and relatives.
Facebook pages are in Italian, German, English and Lithuanian.
The innovative aspects are:
- the idea of exchanging training and information among professionals and caregivers, usually not sharing training on the care of frail elderly;
- the idea of collecting personal experiences and accounts not only from relatives but also from professionals, usually involved only in relation to their professionals skills;
- the use of videos, photos, accounts, short interviews, books reviews made by the project's participants, on themes such as the care of frail older people and the individual and emotional experiences lived by relatives who already went through this experience.