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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.
Summary of project results
We addressed one of the issues of an aging society: the marginalization of older individuals, especially those who can no longer care for themselves. At the same time, we wanted to highlight the lack of reflection on alternative, different forms of care and accommodation.
Within the project activities were conducted research into domestic and foreign practices of community housing provision and community practices of assistance and support in the context of providing long-term care, prepared a report with recommendations, prepared and implemented of a traveling exhibition with an interactive component, online exhibition catalog, social media posts, consultations with stakeholders at exhibitions, carried out advocacy activities and monitoring progress in implementing commitments.
Regarding the advocacy aspect of the project, we cannot overlook the successful contribution to the law on personnel in social welfare, which incorporated nearly all recommendations related to volunteering in long-term care. Additionally, we managed to include residential cooperatives in the Guidelines for the preparation of the Law on Providing Affordable Housing. Perhaps an even more tangible result was the conceptualization and beginning development of a senior living community in Vukovci, where we supported the initiative of the local community with our expertise. This community has the potential to become a model of good practice and a template for other locations across the country, as the project showed substantial interest.