AMIDE stands for: Approaching Multi-ethnicity and Dementia in Education and Work

Dementia is becoming one of the major causes of dependency among older people worldwide and the number of people suffering from dementia and needing care is constantly increasing.

In many countries in Europe, this challenge is combined with the challenge of handling multi-culturality and multi-ethnicity among care staff, among the residents at care homes and the elderly receiving home care – and among the relatives of these.

To care for people with dementia is a special task end to care for people with dementia where you do not share their background and ethnicity is even more difficult. The caregivers have no special education in the field of citizens with another ethnic background suffering from dementia. In spite of the obvious, need, in the existing basic educations, unfortunately, neither handling multicultural relations nor dementia are given high priority.

The objectives of the project

• The overall objective of our project is to contribute to the improvement of competences among teachers and trainers, who are educating and training basic care staff and to the improvement of competences among professional caregivers with regard to multi-ethnicity/multi-culturality and dementia. • Another objective is to strengthen in general the cooperation between care work and care education, build new links and establish new permanent fora.

Development of materials in the project

The project will develop the following materials on basic of workshops and individual interviews:

Each country will have two workshops with representatives from working place and education on practices related to the challenges of multi-ethnicity and multi-culturality in care in general and with a special view to the field of dementia. The workshops and interview will give input to the development of following materials. (There is little or no literature on the subject of people with dementia and another ethnic background)

1. Development of a training program/training course/training material based on the results of the workshops and interviews and development of a Teachers /trainers‘ guide. Development of a reflection tool for caregivers.

3. Production of a video raising the awareness on, the understanding of and the interest in the challenge of multi-ethnicity in the care sector and specifically the challenges related to people suffering from dementia and having different ethnic backgrounds. 4. The establishment of permanent fora/channels/procedures will ensure that the exchange of experiences and continuous communication between education and work life will not end with the end of the project but will continue as permanent activities.

The main target groups of AMiDE are:

a) Teachers, trainers and educators teaching within care educations

b) Students at care educations

c) Caregivers

d) Care organization leaders where employees and/or patients/residents/older people are of differentethnic backgrounds. However, other groups will also benefit from the results and the products of this project: relatives of elderly with a different ethnic background, especially – but not only – if they are suffering from dementia, volunteers working with elderly and of course the older people themselves.