Project details

Key ideas

The Misericordias are private social solidarity institutions with about 500 years of history.
They are about 390 spread all over Portugal and their main objective is social solidarity that they carry out through social activities and social action establishments. In order to achieve that they receive support from the State and social security, but they also carry out economic activities.
The Misericordias are in Portugal a paradigmatic form of the dynamism of the civil society and the social economy. What basically characterizes these institutions of social economy is that, being the greatest institutions carrying out social services, they keep a strong institutional culture where the humanization, the volunteering, the associativism and the sponsoring are the basis of all the action.
The Misericordias employ 10,500 workers and supply assistance to some 51,000 users. About 45% of these users are elderly people. Their closest caters are mostly women with low or none qualification. The result is the precariousness of the employment.
The importance of the social care to elderly people and its increasing demand of personal lead to the need of personal and professional valorization of these workers. That is what the UNIAO DAS MISERICORDIAS PORTUGUESAS - an association created by the Misericordias to represent them and that defends their interests and organizes common services - tried to achieve with the project "PROFESSIONAL VALORIZATION OF WOMEN WORKING ON SOCIAL CARE TO ELDERLY PEOPLE". The project, integrated in the EMPLOYMENT - NOW community initiative, began on January 98 and finishes by November 98.
Through the creation of a professional training system we aim to contribute to qualitative improvements in the social services in general and to ensure a better position to social workers on a precarious and competitive labour market, and, consequently, prevent unemployment.
This system would integrate, as possible, the experiences and knowledge of other EU countries where professional training in the social care sector is well organized with the production of common contents, methods and instruments, contributing to professional certification and free circulation in Europe.
But what we really seek is the valorization of the social workers through the improvement of the performance in employment (as the result of the professional training) and the recognition of the professional training by the national authorities entitled in order to confer a level of qualification.
We are also trying to develop and implement a form of distant learning structured in units that would allow us to attain more care workers and to adjust the training to the specific needs of each worker.
As regards our project, we developed a very interesting bi-lateral work with the Dacorum Council for Voluntary Service from UK and the Caritas from Hamburg (Germany) whose projects had some affinities with ours.
We organized a training course for the Misericordias' geriatrics caters that integrated contents but mostly training methods and instruments from the professional training system of those partners. The training course has 266 hours with these different components: 164 theoretical hours and 60 practical hours off-the-job training in class and 42 practical hours on-the-job training at the Misericordias where the trainees were followed and evaluated by the trainer. The practical on-the-job component occurred between the other training components so it was possible to validate the training guaranteeing that it provided the competencies required to the job. We also tried to adapt the concept of "open-learning". We produced a workbook for one of the modules of the training to be studied by the trainees and monitored by the trainer.
The course took place in three Misericordias, our national partners and was attended by 5 workers each, all women with at least 9 years of school, and good performances at their work activities. The course begun on February 99 and finished on June 99. The trainees had the opportunity to visit the CARITAS of Hamburg in order to contact with the training system and the methods of work of social care sector.
Through the analysis of the results of the impressions of the trainees we think that training methods implemented resulted successfully and the contents were adjusted to their diary work. The trainees were highly motivated and they had acquired the necessary knowledge - theoretical and practical - to improve their performances.
The next steps are now the recognition of the professional training by the national authorities entitled in order to confer a level of qualification and the development and implementation of distant learning that we have already mentioned. But these goals exceed the limits of this project.

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