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Description
With the project Community patchwork: opening spaces, connecting communities, we want to address one of the problems of the aging society: we often leave elderly at the edges of society and institutionalize them, especially when they need help and care. Different forms of community care, which bring benefits to individuals and communities as whole, are not developed, encouraged and supported enough, and target groups are not well informed about them. Based on the inspiring domestic and foreign practices and in cooperation with different stakeholders – current and future users, their relatives, decision makers and care workers – we will research, present and try some of the forms of collaboration between elderly care institutions and the community in which they are placed as well as new forms of community-led housing. We will point out the importance of the community for the well-being of an individual and the role that spaces have for enabling or disabling the communities and caring for one another. In order to create a solid long-term care system it will be necessary to enable the provision of public and affordable services, but not only. Preventive measures will be as well crucial for decent aging - we will need to ensure adequate housing conditions, enable creation of community spaces, where people can meet, organize self-help and sharing, and provide support for the informal carers.
Based on the analysis of the current state and good practices we will design an exhibition and interactive community workshops. The exhibition will be accompanied with the local stakeholders meetings and discussions. Based on all the findings we will design proposals to the decision makers on national level and strive for their integration into law proposals. In parallel we will collaborate with a selected elderly care institution and develop a good practice of continuous and good quality involvement of volunteers in their practice.