Mostly due to increased longevity and medical advances, the needs of older/ill individuals for long-term care rise rapidly while the availability of informal caregivers decrease. Informal caregivers are those who provide unpaid care to a relative or friend with a chronic illness, disability or other long-lasting health or care need. This “Gare Gap” will create huge problems for the sustainability of European health care systems that rely heavily on the provision of informal care. The aim of ENTWINE’s multidisciplinary and inter-sectorial team is to investigate the broad spectrum of issues concerning the development and use of innovative psychosocial and technology-based interventions that support willingness and opportunity to provide informal care. WP 1 details the current and future caregiving challenges and motivations for diverse groups of informal caregivers and their care recipients, and society, in different countries that have different care systems by means of an intensive longitudinal cohort study (ENTWINE-iCohort). It will establish who needs support, what kind and when. WP 2 examines (1) whether specific interventions, services and technology-based interventions (eHealth, social robots) could empower caregivers and reduce their burden, and if so, (2) how best to deliver these interventions, services (e.g. internet platforms) and tools to sustain willingness to care, experience optimal outcomes of their role, and improve quality of life amongst informal caregivers. Methods include experiments, factorial designs, and persuasive profiling. WP 3 examines the implementation and dissemination of innovative technology-based tools and interventions. The focus is on overcoming barriers following a user-centered, stakeholder-driven implementation and agile science approach to promote the adoption and implementation of innovative technologies to support informal caregivers. ENTWINE represents a stepping stone towards sustainable informal care throughout Europe.

The contextThe Senior Social Entrepreneuring project works one of the most important social and educational challenges in 21st century Europe – re-activating the overwhelming social and educational potential of the increasing number of experienced seniors in society to help them build capacity to serve as SOCIAL CHANGE BROKERS in these communities.There is a growing population of healthy older people with the skills, financial resources and time available to contribute to economic activity through extending their working lives, including through entrepreneurship and volunteer work, which is proven to give a positive impact on a person’s mental health. Therefore, we wanted to use the project as a platform to encourage older people to be active citizens and create social innovation as an alternative to traditional public service and furthermore becoming mentors for other potential entrepreneurs, both youth and seniors.The project objectives were to mobilize teams of seniors in participating active in the communities and beyond to build capacity among them to serve as SOCIAL CHANGE BROKERS in these communities.The project succeeded with bringing the policy needs in a strong, systematic and sustainable, yet practical and realistic way. We mobilized groups of seniors and build-up their capacity to act as ´Social Change Brokers´ in EU communities. They identified social needs and facilitated the change process towards a concrete social solution to the problem/need identified. In the capacity building process, they learned how to be a catalyst of social change by bringing in relevant stakeholders across sectors, implementing their initiative and to make their initiative sustainable.Number and profile of participating organizationsThe consortium brought together 8 partners from 6 EU countries: ´practice partners´, ´knowledge partner´ and an experienced ´quality assurance partner´. The coordinating partner was the department of Health Care in Aarhus Municipality (Denmark), while the primary target group in this department is citizens older above 65 years. The knowledge partner was INRCA, a public national organization in Ancona with the main aim of contributing to a holistic understanding of the ageing process from a demographic, social, economic and political perspective. The quality assurance partner was Working with Europe (non-governmental), who has a lot of experience regarding EU projects by helping partner organizations create innovative ideas and support the quality of the work processes and outcomes.The rest of the partners acted as practice partners; 3 non-governmental organizations, one university in England and one public corporation in Barcelona dealing with general interests of commerce, industry and services.Description of undertaken main activitiesThe activities such as project meetings and outputs have contributed to let the partners and participants be aware of what is happening around the six local communities in the project. At the capacity-building seminars a network of European seniors were established. They have learned to act as senior social change brokers and to bring social innovation in the local community. In the end, each local community group arranged a multiplier event, where they promoted their initiatives and told the citizens in their local community about the role as a senior entrepreneur and the impact of the project.Results and impact attainedThe Erasmus+ project SSE has been an important stepping stone towards understanding the importance of seniors’ active role in the local community.The impact of the project has been very positive as the seniors took the stage and they were the main stakeholders of this project and drove the activities. In our opinion the project has been a success, which is visible by the ongoing activities and the sustainability in most of the 16 initiatives.The project creates or promotes social change in different scales and with different stakes, which helps not only the senior to feel useful, but also to be useful to others, whether it is by playing music for the local communities’ elderly or by supporting and mentoring asylum seekers to include them in the community.The plan is not only to make the 16 initiatives sustainable, but also to implement the meaning of a senior social entrepreneur into the local communities, thereby securing the meaning of a senior social change broker and how to act upon this.Our participating seniors expressed their interest in a future European project, where their new senior-driven social innovation practice can be put into further use by focusing on isolation and loneliness in both rural and urban areas.It’s worth mentioning that our French partner Pistes Solidaires applied for a KA2 Adult Education project, ARTEM, this spring at the French agency and the project was granted. Their initiative began in the Senior Social Entrepreneuring programme and now it is made sustainable by their new project.