“I'm an animal of the earth as any human being with virtues and defects,
with mistakes and achievements, so leave me alone.
In my memory, this memory that is me.
I do not want to forget anything.”
(José Saramago, The last notebook, Day 28, Memories)
INNOMEC - Innovative Management and Educational Practices in Elderly Care Centres is a Grundtvig Multilateral Project under the Lifelong Learning Programme implemented from November 2013 to October 2015 by partners from Italy (Rome, Palermo, Vicenza and Verona), Austria (Graz), Belgium (Brussels), Lithuania (Vilnius), and Iceland (Reykjavik).
Who might be interested in more deeply and further applying the adult education techniques tested by INNOMEC? Our core target groups are practitioners - workers and volunteers - active and engaged in the social care services within Elderly Care Centres (residential care or daily centres), lifelong learning educators, and trainers for older people and university students in social sciences and andragogy.
These practices are intended to provide beneficial effects for the older guests of ECCs and to stimulate those key actors active in lifelong learning – e.g. managers of elderly centres, people responsible for the staff continued training, developers and providers of qualifications and further training opportunities, private and public associations for elderly people, European and local project managers, providers of individual services for older people, etc. in order to improve the quality of the educational practices among social workers and to encourage local and European networking.
The mix of the traditional practices, such as the narrative and biographical approaches, founded on a “transcultural vision of the societies and of the single persons”
, blended with the valorisation of the digital media for fostering the memories transmission (through the Bank of Memory Memoro) or linked to the “Hearing Exercise” proposed by the Audio-Psycho-Phonology method, is the core of INNOMEC idea where intergenerational exchange can be possible and where, Elderly Care Homes/Centres are open to the local communities and are motivated to be more and more actively engaged in the community life.
From our experience we share our findings and conclusions, providing the followed process in the different local contexts, and the new learning opportunities opened by the valorisation of these methods and tools with/for older and younger people.
Our wish is to improve and better valorise the qualitative contributions of social workers in adult learning, in most countries the Cinderella of the health-care system, where health issues and medical competencies play a predominant role, although the announcements of more “integrated and multidisciplinary approaches and services”
for an active and healthy aging {1} are advertised.
Innomec Community on Facebook
{1} Strategic Implementation Plan for the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing – Steering Group Working Document – Final text adopted by the Steering Group on 17/11/11 (“Collaborative, integrated and people-centred care provisions, whether in hospitals, homes or in the community, is a way forward to sustainable and efficient care systems”
, Foreword)