Getting older with a disability: GOLD project launched!
Background
The world’s population is ageing rapidly, with the proportion of people over 60 expected to almost double by 2050. At the same time, life expectancy for people with disabilities has increased significantly, creating unique challenges for health and social care. Ageing with a disability often leads to premature health decline and increased vulnerability to secondary conditions. Despite shared risks with the general ageing population, gaps remain in service design and professional skills. The GOLD project aims to equip disability and geriatric care professionals and informal carers with the tools to anticipate risks and ensure quality support for ageing people with disabilities.
What is the GOLD project about?
The Erasmus+ project GOLD aims to equip professionals and informal carers with essential skills to improve the quality of services and ensure dignified and healthy ageing. With the increasing life expectancy of people withdisabilities, new challenges in care require innovative solutions. The project promotes collaboration between thegeriatric and disability care sectors to adapt services effectively. Through training, awareness raising and practical tools, GOLD aims to promote inclusion, empowerment and better support for older people.
What are the main objectives of the GOLD project?
- To train and equip professionals and informal carers in the disability and geriatric care sectors to respond effectively to the needs of people ageing with disabilities.
- To promote social inclusion, empowerment and dignity for people with disabilities as they age.
- To raise awareness of ageing with a disability among professionals, informal carers, public authorities and civil society.
The project aims to innovate services for people with disabilities as they age in response to the evolving needs of an ageing population. Through collaboration, training and awareness- raising, the GOLD project aims to build a futurewhere older people with disabilities receive the quality care and dignity they deserve.
To achieve this, the GOLD project will develop practical, easy-to-use training resources to equip social, paramedical,educational, care professionals and informal carers for the transition of care and accommodation services.
Inspiring stories, experiences and practices
GOLD partners are committed to make sure that the project is rooted into reality and that the outcomes of the projectare as close as possible to the needs of professionals, main caregivers and people with disabilities. For this reason, theproject partners dedicated the first few months of their work to extensive research and interviews.
First, the GOLD project identified inspiring experiences and practices related to ageing people with disabilities, collected testimonies (ageing people with disabilities, the professionals who support them, their carers) and analysed the training needs for professionals.
To achieve these objectives, the GOLD project partners collected information on 23 good practices and conducted 45 qualitative interviews with ageing people with disabilities, professionals and main caregivers.
The information collected was analysed and used to develop three documents. A documentary and a field research document provides a contextual framework of the state of the art prior to the project, incorporating a policy analysis. The document also aims to inspire practices and highlight experiences related to providing services for people with disabilities as they grow older. The synthesis report brings together the conclusions and recommendations from the research, the analysis and summary of qualitative interviews, as well as the key concepts related to the project’stheme. A competence framework is also under development to present, in a structured and readable way at European level, the needs in terms of skills, knowledge and attitudes of professionals and close caregivers who support ageingpeople with disabilities. This competence framework will serve as a basis for the development of the training modules to be produced by the GOLD project.
All these resources will be soon available on GOLD website: so keep posted !
Who are the project partners?
The GOLD project is implemented by a consortium of 9 organizations from France, Belgium, Italy, Portugal, Austria and Romania.
AGFE – France| Project coordinator https://www.agfe95.eu/en/
UNESSA – Belgium http://unessa.be/Homepage.aspx
ANZIANI E NON SOLO – Italy https://www.anzianienonsolo.it/online/ SCUOLA CENTRALEFORMAZIONE – Italy https://scformazione.org/ APROXIMAR – Portugal www.aproximar.pt
CHANCE B – Austria https://www.chanceb-gruppe.at
ASSOC – Romania www.assoc.ro
EUROPEAN PLATFORM FOR REHABILITATION – Belgium https://www.epr.eu/
AGE PLATFORM EUROPE – Belgium https://www.age-platform.eu/
The 2nd Transnational Project Meeting in Modena
On 6th and 7th May 2025, European partners from France, Belgium, Italy, Portugal, Romania and Austria gathered in Modena (Italy) for the second transnational project meeting. During the two-day event,productive discussions were held and the next steps were agreed upon.
The in-person meeting and the fruitlful discussion between partners has been very useful in order to strengthen collaboration, work in a coordinated manner and increase the quality of project results and outputs.
The partnership is highly committed and this Transnational meeting wasalso the occasion to celebrate the milestones achieved so far, and set new goals and activities to be implemented during the next months.
Much has already been achieved, and there is still more to be done!
For more information and updates on the GOLD project, please visit https://gold-project.eu/ and follow us on major social media using the hashtag #GOLD_EU_PROJECT
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