New digital tools at the service of people who care

Toni Codina on 8 May 2023

OKencasa (Basque Country) and myCarenet (Catalonia).

Held on July 11, 2023.

Care tasks involve supporting and assisting people who need help to carry out their daily activities for various reasons (illness, disability, aging, etc.). The role of non-professional or informal carers is key in the face of dependency, but the time and energy devoted to these demanding tasks can involve changes in their daily life and in their physical and emotional health.

For this reason, it is important to recognize the importance of the social contribution of carers and to provide them with adequate care support. In recent years, initiatives and platforms have been promoted that provide tools and resources to face care tasks effectively and allow the creation of optimal support networks for caregivers, with the aim of reducing their stress and exhaustion and be able to provide quality care without compromising their health and well-being.

OKencasa, platform launched in 2018 that offers support to non-professional carers who take care of elderly or dependent people. Through the Zaindoo app, it offers the permanent support of a professional, online training, tools to organize care tasks, and discounts or advantages in physiotherapy services, legal advice, home adaptation, etc. The aim is to accompany and improve the quality of life of the carer and to facilitate their day-to-day care, i.e. to take care of the people they care for.
myCarenet, application launched in 2018 that allows the person with some type of dependency or their family member or caregiver to weave and co-create their own support network, in their own home and in their usual environment. With an inclusive and community perspective, and at the same time preventing an eventual feeling of unwanted loneliness, myCarenet allows the burden of care to be shared, lightening the burden of the main carer.

Speakers:

Iñigo Kortabitarte, OKencasa (Basque Country)
Albert Puig, myCarenet (Catalonia)

Innobreaks

Preventive action against neglect and child abuse

AFST – Allegheny Family Screening Tool (USA) and PIPPI – Intervention Program for the Prevention of Institutionalization (Italy) – Held on 14/06/2022

4.0 solutions that empower and facilitate personal autonomy

APP&TOWN COMPAGNON (Spain, Canada) and REHAB-LAB (France) – Held on 06/04/2022

ICT tools to combat loneliness in the elderly

TEKNOADINEKO (Euskadi, Spain) and ELDCARE (Catalonia, Spain) – Held on 08/02/2022

Online peer-to-peer psychosocial support services

CIRCLES (San Francisco, USA) and IPSO (Konstanz, Germany) – Held on 14/12/2021

New tools for remote social services users monitoring

WACS (UK) and DigiContact (Netherlands) – Held on 22/10/2021

Mano, an app for social professionals working on the streets and in shelters

Toni Codina on 2 May 2023

Free app that facilitates and helps to improve the work of public service professionals working with vulnerable people, on the street and in sheltered areas.

Mano is a freely accessible application for smartphones that allows workers to continuously and closely monitor the people they follow during reception procedures and activities. It also has a web interface for computers. It thus makes it possible to complete and consult the medical-social files of these people, avoiding the loss of information and the need to constantly renew it. In addition, it also allows workers and their respective teams to have all tasks grouped together –those already carried out and planned– and to be alerted to future deadlines and commitments. It also automatically generates anonymous statistics and reports.

All of this guarantees the protection of the data of the people accompanied, which are encrypted and only the people who form part of the monitoring team have access to them. In fact, Mano’s functionalities have been specially conceived and designed by the users who use them and, for this reason, the tool is constantly being improved. The users have been trained by Mano, both on the streets and in the reception areas, as well as in telephone assistance.

Characteristics of innovation

Bank of innovations, Cross-cutting intervention, Homelessness and the right to housing, Information and planning, New technological tool, Personalization of the service, Poverty and exclusion, Process simplification, Proximity care, Self-management and participation

Localization

France

Partners / Funders

Ille de France Regional Health Agency, Digital transformation of the ecosystems of the French Recovery Plan.

Genesis

This tool was designed and supervised by the AURORE association, and incubated at the Digital Factory of the French Ministry of Health and Solidarity.

Level of implementation

Since its launch, 109,757 people have been accompanied by the Mano tool and 227,493 actions have been produced and registered. Users appreciate the exclusive attention to the needs of professionals in the sector, and especially the fact that the application simplifies their work by providing contacts, timetables and directions to the reception sites and allows them to monitor in detail how the territories are evolving.

More information

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Moods, promoting good screen use among teenagers and young people

Toni Codina on 25 April 2023

Community intervention project with a comprehensive approach to prevent risks in the use of new technologies among adolescents and young people and promote their proper use.

The Moods Project was born from the realisation that, in a modernity governed by social networks and mobile phones that change the way we live and relate to each other, new technologies pose new challenges and risks –such as addiction, pathological gambling, grooming, cyberbullying or social isolation– to be prevented. Specifically, it is aimed at adolescents and young people, as the name of the project indicates: mood is the English word that refers to the state of mind and is a colloquial expression widely used among young people.

The project is developed through a set of workshops and interventions that are carried out in secondary schools with the aim of promoting the good use of screens among students. It is well known that the use they make of social networks and new technologies is diverse and can have consequences on mental health. Through the workshops, participants reflect on and become aware of their use of screens. Thus, the project provides them with tools that allow them to identify risky and addictive behaviours. In addition, the workshops encourage critical thinking –allowing them to reflect on video games and online gambling, for example– and debate on the values that are transmitted through networks and on the need and importance of combining virtual leisure with live leisure. The project includes an impact evaluation plan that allows measuring and assessing the changes produced among participants through questionnaires.

The project has been implemented in the neighbourhood of Horta Guinardó, in Barcelona, and in Quatre Carreres, in Valencia, where a team of professionals has given workshops to young people aged between 12 and 16 in secondary schools in the neighbourhoods. Apart from workshops in secondary schools, the project also includes prevention workshops in leisure and free time organisations and training for families and teaching teams from the schools.