Place4Carers: the project
Place4Carers, funded by the Cariplo Foundation and coordinated by the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan, in collaboration with the Milan Polytechnic, the NEED Institute and the Innovation and Development Research Area of the Valle Camonica ATSP, is configured as a community-based participatory research with the aim to co-generate, develop and implement a new social and community service to promote the active engagement of family caregivers of elderly subjects living in the remote and rural areas of Valle Camonica.
Place4Carers, in particular, aims to implement the principles of Ageing in Place in the territories of Valle Camonica, namely the valorisation of active and healthy aging in people's places of life. To do this it is essential to make family caregivers involved in the paths of assistance and care of their loved ones.
Moreover, in remote areas and rural caregivers, caregivers hace to face with much more complex challenges than those who live in the city, due to the greater difficulty in accessing services.
Goals
Based on these premises, Place4Carers intends to support and develop the involvement and engagement of family caregivers of senior citizens, in close collaboration with social-health professionals and researchers, with the aim of implementing new services and giving them greater support by making them full actors of the welfare system. A further objective of the project will be to test a possible transferability of the service hypothesis which will be co-generated with the caregivers into contexts similar to that of Valle Camonica.
Expected impact
The project will not only contribute to increasing the scientific knowledge on the issues of the ageing in place and the active involvement of the caregivers, but will offer specific insights about the most appropriate interventions to support family members in remote and rural areas such as the once of Valle Camonica.