DIMCARE

Digital Missions for Care Social Economy’s Resilience (DIMCARE) addresses the need for digitalisation in the people care sector within the social economy ecosystem.

The people care sector is characterised by a great need for physical presence, as the care sector mainly provides on-site services. The digitalisation of these services is much more complex than in other sectors. The project understands the digitalisation of the people care sector as the introduction of digital solutions and tools into the main activities that the sector carries out.

The context

Social economy is to play a crucial role in the recovery of the European Union from COVID-19 pandemic crisis. Not only for the reason that it represents 6.54% of EU GDP (European industrial strategy), but also because “proximity, social economy and civil security” contributes directly to local prosperity and well-being of citizens, where they provide essential production, services and revenues.

The use of new technologies and digital social innovations within a social enterprise or social economy ecosystem context is key for the future.

Due to the irruption of new technologies and the digitalisation of today’s society, exponentially increased by the crisis generated by COVID-19, the people care sector finds itself in a situation of enormous complexity, which entails a great challenge: adapting the way in which it offers services to its users by means of digital tools.

It is not only a question of digitalising the processes of the social enterprises that provide this care to people, but also of being able to rely on digital elements, components and tools in the services involved. It is a fact that people care involves a great deal of face-to-face work, so adapting these services to digital media is much more complicated than in other sectors of activity.

The action

The project DIMCARE will contribute to:

Developing transnational and inter-regional collaboration between social economy stakeholders (public and private sector) in the field of Social Economy Missions’ theme;

Boosting peer-learning, sharing and replicating good practices and success stories between social economy stakeholders;

Improving collaboration between existing social economy networks and stakeholders at regional and local level in the digitalisation of the people care sector

Showcasing social economy enterprises and organisations and promoting their role in building resilience in territories;

Developing local action plans with social economy enterprises and stakeholders in the digitalisation of the people care sector.

The impact

Considering digitalisation as the main topic, and social economy actors and local governments as central pillars of the project, and based on a research-action approach, DIMCARE aims to:

Foster awareness of digitalisation relevance among people care sector players at interregional level;
Detect and sharing of knowledge and good practices and interregional learning related to digitalisation of people care sector within social economy ecosystem;
Identify the specific needs of people care sector related to digitalisation;
Develop local social economy action plans devoted to the digitalisation of the people care sector;
Elaborate guidelines and replicable recommendations on further digitalisation of the people care sector.

The multidisciplinary approach will allow the project to achieve highly useful and relevant results, while also creating synergies between professionals devoted to the different sectors involved The research-action approach pursued by the project brings together knowledge-generating spaces such as universities, social enterprises and public administration, orienting the results of the research towards implementable components with an impact on local action plans.

The targets

The project DIMCARE addresses:

Local Administrations
by enabling them to develop a local plan for the digitisation of the care sector as part of the social economy ecaosystem

Social Enterprises
linked to the people care sector, by offering them a diagnosis of needs and specificities with a view to the digitalisation of their field of activity, and showing them the most relevant good practices and tools at their disposal in the European context. In addition, social enterprises will benefit from the development of local plans as direct beneficiaries

Higher Education Iinstitutions
since they could work on research activities devoted to social economy and digitalisation, in direct collaboration with social enterprises and local administrations.

Transnational visits

During the transnational visits partners have had the opportunity to study from different point of view the digitisation of the care sector. During each visit, partners have visited reference social enterprises in the field of digitisation and care giving, as stimulus to exchanges of good practices, peer-to-peer learning, proposals for new approaches and impacting on the rising of awareness about digitalisation and its importance within social care sector.

Mataro’

FUNDACIO’ HOSPITAL
It is a community and social foundation. The aim of this foundation is to complement the social actions and health services developed by public administrations. This foundation hosts different associations. The associations have been created for helping people with common social and health problems. The actions they carried out complement those carried out by the Public Administrations. The associations were created by people (or their relatives) that have social or health problems.
The process/level of digitization: Fundacio Hospital has developed a digital process at the administrative level.

FUNDACIO’ MARESME
It is a foundation that promotes the social integration of the people with disabilities. They develop different activities: schools, health services houses (residences of people with disabilities), occupational centers and so on.
The process/level of digitization: They have a process of digitization at an administrative level

B-SWIMG
The aim of B-Swing is to advise/help public and private institutions, sport centers to adapt the sport (specially swimming) to the special needs that their users have. The philosophy is that people with disabilities and non disabilities compete together.
The process/level of digitization:They have a process of digitization at an administrative level

Varaždin

Varaždin County Red Cross Society
The Croatian Red Cross achieves humanitarian goals and tasks in the field of protection and promotion of health, social welfare, health and humanitarian education, and advocates respect for international humanitarian law and the protection of human rights

Secondary Vocational School Varaždin
The vocational high school has been integrating students with disabilities into the regular curriculum since 1968 In order to ensure employment opportunities for people with disabilities and reduced working abilities, the Protection Workshop was jointly established in 2006 by the Varaždin County, the Croatian Employment Service and the Vocational School. The main activity of the Protective Workshop is the production of work and protective clothing, the production of baby diapers and the production of school furniture.

Social cooperative Humana Nova
Social cooperative Humana Nova is a social enterprise operating in 3 areas: environmental, social and economic.
They employ people with disabilities and other socially excluded people who in Humana Nova create new values every day from discarded textile items and create new quality and innovative products. The team consists of 44 workers, 25 of whom are people with
disabilities, and 13 are members of other marginalized groups whose work in Humana Nova is changing their live.

Prato

CED & SNISS
CED (citizen services offered through the digital agenda) and SINSS (computerized social folder management program)
There is a platform where every citizen in Prato city can access, in an easy way, the administrative procedures. The citizen may carry out the following practices:

Home assistance.
Housing emergency
Health tickets and
Rental of public housing.

It works in the following way:

Citizens go to a tobacco shop of choice. Tobacconist through an internet connection and a password access municipal services.
At the time of payment, the tobacconist directly updates the municipal records. The municipality does not have additional recordkeeping operations to be deferred and avoid the use of paper form to be filled out manually.

RigenER Prato
Was one of the initiatives selected in the framework of the Social Innovation Program. This programme is managed by the Italian Presidency of the Council Ministers and it is aimed at fostering innovation social in accordance with the European Standards.
It is implemented by the Municipality of Prato in cooperation with PN Banca Etica (Ethical Bank) and other private service providers based in Prato.
The aim is to achieve greater autonomy for people benefiting from the public housing system in Prato through customized social service packages shortening the time needed for a household to become independent and not rely anymore on the support provided by the Municipality.
The revision and digitalization of the need assessment firm are fundamental for the systematization and capitalization of qualitative and quantitative data collected by the social workers in the pre-assessment and assessment phase.
The digitalized tool represents a good working practice for social workers and all stakeholders involved in project implementation.
The digitalization of the needs assessment sheets allowed to:

Collect and capitalize on a great number of inputs to better design tailored interventions in line with the household’s multidimentisional needs.
Ensure great objectivity in the choice of granting support and designing the interventions.
Monitor and evaluate the achievements in terms of increased self reliance and better adapt the activities to ensure their relevance and effectiveness.
Increase the availability and easiness to access data on the part of social workers (data accessibility and efficiency).

This digital tool was created with the cooperation of the Social Services of the Municipality of Prato and PIN-ARCO research center.

ALICE Social Cooperative
Is a cooperative that promotes the qualitative innovation of the local welfare system through social research and design.
It was created in 1979 as a consequence of a migratory movement that was suffered by the city of Prato because of the industrial activity that was in this city.
Its primary objective has always been the creation of quality employment and the promotion of quality in work. Develop other kinds of activities such as education to promote labor inclusion.
Since 2015, has adopted the Gecoaplus platform initially being tested on the home care service for computerization of data from the shift planning process, to final reporting. This platform offers schedule planning, real-time access logging, time clock verification and a final reporting. In the end, the platform gives information about the service given to every user. The data of the platform are available for the cooperative who give information every month to the public administration.

EMPORIO CARITAS
It’s a place for free distribution of essential food items. It is a solidarity and anti-waste project. The municipality, the province, and the Prato Saving Bank Foundation, along with the Diocesan Caritas, the project promoters. Every user has a card with an amount of points available for changing during three months. When the user goes inside of the supermarket a machine gives information about the amount of points that are available to “buy”.
Emporio Caritas developed other kinds of activities such as education to promote labor inclusion.

PANE e ROSE and CO&SO
The Pane e Rose is a cooperative that was founded in 1998 by ten volunteers who were committed to prevent Youth distress. The dynamism of the founders and constant attention to innovation and the needs of the area allowed the cooperative to quickly expand its services for minors and later extend Pane Rose to other areas of activity.
The development of the cooperative has allowed the consolidation of numerous new jobs, especially for young people looking for their firs job, offering a professional outlet for those university studies considered “weak” and has ensured adequate training for its operators, facilitating enrollment and attendance at courses offered by the area of providing its own internal training and supervision service.
Currently they are developing together with the public administration a project about assistive technologies to support older adults. The kind of technologies that they are using are: TV Box, Environmental sensors, Wearable sensors and Telepresence robot, PC, tablet.
The telepresence robot was used to maintain the relationship between the professional caregiver and the user, offering the possibility of remote home visits and health monitoring, even several times during the day. They use the Easi app. this app was born in the project of the Tuscany Region “Pronto Badante”. Has been used for remote monitoring throught facilitate video-calls.

KEPOS ONLUS SOCIAL COOPERATIVE
Works for the global growth and improvement of the quality of life of people with disability.
Through social integration, personal autonomy, support for families, functional pathways are structured to enhance the potential of people with disability.
They have developed different digital tools to facilitate the level of communication of the users and has as a consequence a great level of people integration.
The project is very similar to those presented in Mataró by Fundació Maresme.