Caring for someone can be mentally draining and exhausting. Both informal carers ‒ who provide unpaid care to a close one outside a professional or formal framework ‒ and professional LTC workers, face the potential risk of compromising their mental health and well-being over time.
How can we safeguard their health and resilience?
What if improved integration of LTC could help mitigate such risks ?
Investing in the mental health and wellbeing of informal carers and long-term care workers through the identification, evaluation, and promotion of good practices across Europe.
WELL CARE
is a transdisciplinary and participative project in which informal carers and long-term care (LTC) workers, researchers, NGOs, experts and stakeholder organisations within health and social care, psychology, sociology and gerontology work together to strengthen supports available for improving the mental wellbeing and resilience of all carers.
WELL CARE
focuses on strengthening care partnerships, understood as the coordination, integration, and mutual recognition of care and caring activities performed by informal carers and LTC workers, in a vision of
integrated LTC.
WELL CARE
aims to increase the understanding of successful ways of preventing and managing mental health and wellbeing issues among informal carers and LTC workers. This includes looking at personal factors, the environment, and how organisations can make solutions successful.
WELL CARE
will ultimately develop a set of support measures to address the mental health and wellbeing needs of both informal carers and LTC workers, thus sustaining and enabling a vision of care partnerships between these
two groups.
What's new?
WELL CARE presented at a EU Health Policy Platform webinar
On the 29th of October 2024, on the occasion of the International Day of Care…
Country reports on the implementation of the Council Recommendation on access to affordable high-quality long-term care are available onlin
Responsibility for the design and delivery of long-term care services lies primarily with Member States.…
Online Seminar “United for Resilience in the Health and Care Sectors”
On the 22nd of October 2024, a webinar entitled “United for Resilience in the Health…
New Report Release: Examining Policies & Support for Long-Term Care Providers’ Mental Health
We are excited to announce the release of "D4.1: Report on Analysis of Legislation, Policies,…
The BLNs Methodology in Practice: Feedback on the initial series of meetings
Blended Learning Networks (BLNs) are a key method we use in the WELL CARE project…
New report: Mental health challenges in the EU health and social care sector during COVID-19: strategies for prevention and management/ A literature review
A new report commissioned by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA)…
Preliminary findings from the search for good practices
A project milestone has been achieved in the review, selection, and analysis of good practices.…
Presentation of the WELL CARE project at the European Ageing Network General Assembly in Athens
On September 25, 2024, the European Ageing Network (EAN) held its General Assembly in Athens,…
Updates from the Dutch Blended Learning Network
Since the start of the WELL CARE project in early 2024, the Dutch Blended Learning…
Well Care Kick-Off Meeting in Brussels
The inaugural in-person meeting for the Well Care project took place in Brussels on February…
4 concrete objectives to transform care
1.
Identify 40 good practices reducing risks for both occupational and non-occupational challenges faced by informal carers and LTC workers.
2.
Develop, test, and validate 5-8 innovative solutions across five countries, together with local and national ecosystems of stakeholders.
3.
Analyse EU and national policies, offering actionable recommendations for policymakers and stakeholders.
4.
Establish a sustainable research, innovation, and sharing process, involving key stakeholders at national and European levels.
Resilience is the ability – of individuals and communities – to adapt to adversity, taking into account not only individuals’ internal resources, but also their social environments and the availability of resources within them. In this way, resilience is an integrative process made up of psychological, social, and systemic factors.
The project will consistently consider gender, inclusion and intersectionality perspectives to understand possible inequalities and necessary changes for more fair and inclusive policies and practices.
The WELL CARE project will systematically involve informal carers, LTC workers, persons with LTC needs and stakeholders in national Blended Learning Networks.
WELL CARE: A 48-Month Transdisciplinary Collaboration
Embark on a 48-month journey with WELL CARE, a transdisciplinary and collaborative project. Researchers, NGOs, and expert organisations in health, social care, psychology, sociology, and gerontology join forces to fortify support systems for and with informal carers and LTC workers. Funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe program, the project commenced on January 1, 2024.
Principal Investigator
Elizabeth Hanson, Professor, Dept. Health & Caring Sciences, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, Linnaeus University, Research Director, Swedish Family Care Competence Centre (Nka), Board Member and former President of Eurocarers.
Participating Organizations
Research Organizations
Linnaeus University (coordinator), Sweden; Free University (Vrije Universiteit), Netherlands; National Institute of Health and Science on Ageing (IRCCS INRCA), Italy; Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences, Germany; University of Ljubljana, Slovenia; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA.
Non-profit Organizations and Knowledge Translation Centres
Swedish Family Care Competence Centre (Nka), Netherlands Cares for Each Other (NLZVE); Anziani e Non Solo, Italy; wir pflegen, Germany; Anton Trstenjak Institute of Gerontology and Intergenerational Relations, Slovenia.
European Umbrella Organisations
Mental Health Europe (MHE); Eurocarers; European Ageing Network (EAN); European Association of Service Providers for Persons with Disabilities (EASPD).
