Abstract
According to Eurocarers (2022) statistics, informal carers amount to more than 100 million. The Covid-19 pandemic situation has shown how essential their contribution is for the sustainability and resilience of European care systems (European Commission, 2021). These data highlighted how relevant and necessary was to work on the psycho-physical health of informal carers. Resil4Care (2022-2024) was an Erasmus+ project that aimed to improve the coping skills of informal carers and empowering them in their role using social media platforms capable of creating specific online support groups to help developing their resilience in a smart and remote way, with online support groups.
The project was conceived and written during the Covid-19 pandemic, which is why the main objective was to give informal carers caring for a person in a fragile condition the opportunity to receive support even at a distance, and this was fully achieved through the implementation of the project.
The general objectives of Resil4Care were: - To raise the awareness and self-management of stress among informal carers; - To support informal carers in developing new skills and competences to improve the care conditions and their own wellbeing; - To build and expand social skills and relationships of the informal carers to overcome feelings of loneliness. Resil4Care partnership set up 4 Facebook support groups in 4 different EU countries: Teniamoci per mano (IT), Ayudar a quien cuida (SP). Φροντίζω…για αυτούς που φροντίζουν (GR), Družinski oskrbovalci (SLO). In each country a core group of facilitators made of 2-3 health and social care professionals and 2-3 informal carers had the task to meet regularly for 1 year to manage and moderate their local Facebook support group to collect and publish individual experiences, stories, answers/questions and useful information. Each month all core groups from each pilot site met regularly to have the opportunity to learn from each other on how to provide the best support for informal carers who were involved by partners working in social and health care services for different age groups, mostly caregivers of older adults, but could also apply to carers of children, adolescents, young adults, and adults. The technical partner of the project developed a training course manual on how to run a Facebook support group to produce outcomes transferable across Europe. During the implementation phase the Facebook support groups reached more than 900 informal carers across Europe (193 in Greece, 126 in Italy, 501 in Slovenia and 102 in Spain), by supporting and empowering them, and at last improving their resilience. Guidelines have been developed for the adoption of the Resil4Care model in different health and social care settings. The model can be considered a suitable tool to reach larger groups of informal carers within and beyond the European Union, to manage great use of information, communication and to improve cooperation among communities.