Taking into account the fact that nursing and caretaking professions for the sick, elderly and disabled are currently in very high demand and based on the best practices in German nursing education and training, INTAMT Academy in cooperation with its consortium partners ACTA Center (Romania), CEIPES (Italy), Listen Up Foundation – Заслушай се (Bulgaria), Utenos kolegija / University of Applied Science (Lithuania), and Verband Sonderpädagogik / Special Education Association (Germany) plan to analyse the existing possibilities of vocational education and training in nursing and care as well as to check the feasibility of development of a online course for the deaf as well as provide some major recommendations for such course.
In accordance with the underlined main horizontal priority of the project, the participants assume that the development of an online training course for deaf and hearing impaired people in the field of nursing and care is an important and urgent task for further empowerment of professional and social integration of this category of people. In order to contribute to this priority and taking into account the actual needs of the market, the project has identified the following objectives:
– Analyze the current situation in the field of nursing and care, market offers and requirements in this field, to identify general legislative, regulatory and procedural descriptors of the profession, to evaluate weaknesses and strengths of existing training programs.
– Analyse the current employment situation of deaf and hearing-impaired people with a special focus on young people (aged 18 to 35 years), determine the scope and thematic areas of skills-based training programs for students with hearing loss with a special focus on the healthcare and caretaking.
– Provide the deaf and hearing impaired with basic knowledge about care and treatment to assess their overall interest in this area.
– Develop a short plan for a future blended training course for the deaf with their specific characteristics and adapt the plan together with several European countries involved in the project.
– Explore possible ways of transnational mobility for qualified hearing impaired people.
On the 30th of January, 2020, representatives of the consortium visited the State Educational Centre for the Deaf and Hearing Impaired in Osnabrück, Lower Saxony. The centre consists of a kindergarten (16 children), a primary school (70 pupils) and two secondary schools (130 students), a counselling centre and a vocational education centre (100 students). In addition, the centre supports hearing-impaired and deaf students from other schools in Lower Saxony (425 altogether) through a specialized mobile service. The Counselling Centre supports deaf and hearing impaired people and their families from the age of 4 months to 24 years.
The Vocational Education Center offers, among other things, vocational education and training programs for care assistants. The course lasts for 2 years and for many people it is the first step in obtaining the full qualification of a “caretaker”. The participants got acquainted with the experience of this training program implementation, discussed its advantages and disadvantages, as well as the possibility of cooperation in creating a new international educational resource on care for the target group of ACPD project.
