InvisiCare, monitoring without sensors of the homes of the elderly

Publications Bank of innovations

InvisiCare, monitoring without sensors of the homes of the elderly

JDC-Eshel

Old woman accompanied by her granddaughter. Retrieved from InvisiCare’s website.

A proactive, preventive and community technology system to support older people and their families in a non-invasive, secure, autonomous and community-integrated way. Use the collected encrypted data to detect unexpected patterns or behaviours that require family, social or health intervention. And through artificial intelligence, it warns whoever is relevant. This will help to prevent situations that may pose a long-term problem. In addition to this preventative aspect, it also has a proactive one, since through an App and through a network of communities and accompaniment it provides active and permanent support to the elderly, from the family, the community and public social and health services.

The InvisiCare technology is not invasive as it does not use appliances, does not need contact with people, nor does it need any installation or house maintenance, so it does not face any kind of technological barrier by users. It works thanks to these pillars: the obtaining of data, which is securely and encrypted, by telecommunications and supply operators (TV, telephone, light, water, etc.); the detection of triggers, since it uses the data collected with algorithms to detect abnormal situations that require attention; the generation of notifications, by means of artificial intelligence that decides the type of notification to be sent; and at the same time advises on the type of accompanying and support that needs to be put in place and, if this is a prolonged action, the system will create a roadmap to carry out.

Invisicare

Be Girl, project against menstrual poverty, and the stigma and taboos it entails

Publications Bank of innovations

Be Girl, project against menstrual poverty, and the stigma and taboos it entails

Be Girl and Plan Internacional

Colombian girls with their Smart Cycle. Retrieved from the website of Be Girl.

Project to combat menstrual poverty, as well as the stigma and the taboos it entails. It consists of an offer of reusable and affordable menstrual products, training workshops and a pendant that helps to monitor the menstrual cycle itself.

Be Girl products consist of reusable menstrual products, such as panties or cloth pads, made of waterproof and absorbing materials that prevent loss and allow for affordable and safe menstruation, both for the environment and for users. They have a useful life of two years, avoiding waste from traditional pads and tampons, as well as being safer, hygienic and more economic in the long term. Its design is comfortable, beautiful, and efficient to respond to the needs of people who menstruate.

The project also offers menstrual cycle knowledge workshops, which include the use of Smart Cycle, a tool that allows one to know the menstrual cycle and its different parts (menstruation, ovulation, maximum fertility day, etc.). It is a pendant that helps track the menstrual cycle and better understand one’s body. These workshops are intended for both girls and boys, to show menstruation as a natural and free of stigmas. They are performed in schools and leisure sites, to make them safer and freer from menstrual taboos.

Be Girl products can also be purchased online, and with the benefits of the sales, the impulsive organizations fund the free distribution of products to girls with few resources.

Be Girl

Cycling Without Age, voluntary rickshaws service for older people

Publications Bank of innovations

Cycling Without Age, voluntary rickshaws service for older people

Cycling Without Age

Ole Kassow, founder of Cycling Without Age, driving two users. Retrieved from the Cycling Without Age website

Voluntary service to promote active ageing and good treatment of older people, from the creation of new intergenerational relationships to combat unintended isolation and loneliness.

Cycling Without Age allows the elderly to feel emotion again and the freedom of a bicycle ride in which they can feel “the wind in their hair”. The service is made possible by voluntary people of all ages, who offer themselves to ride elderly people in two-seat rickshaws to recover a type of mobility that many of these people can no longer experience because of their old age.

It is a service that provides an improvement in the quality of life of both voluntaries and users. For the former it can be a way to exercise, connect with the community and other people and create unexpected relationships; and for the elderly it means to feel freer and avoid unwanted loneliness and isolation: during the rides they can tell personal stories while visiting the city or territory where they have lived all or part of their lives and rememorize episodes they can share with the volunteer and other participants.

There is no fixed timetable for rides or volunteers, but everyone decides how much time they can and want to contribute, making Cycling Without Age an activity that is done for the pleasure of doing it, not out of obligation.

It is an activity that began in Denmark, where bicycles are widely used, but has spread rapidly to 51 countries around the world, among which Catalonia, where it’s called “En bici sense edat”, making this experience available for more people. The Catalan initiative “En bici sense edad” is already present today in four Catalan cities and in April 2021 it received the prize of Social Innovation Maria Figueras i Mercè Bañeras from Plataforma Educativa.

Cycling Without Age

3D Community, social housing built with 3D printers

Publications Bank of innovations

3D Community, social housing built with 3D printers

New Story, ICON, Échale

Two kids in front of one of the houses built in Mexico. Retrieved from New Story’s website.

3D-built housing, which enables high-quality housing parks to be generated and in a much faster and more affordable way than with traditional construction options.

The first housing park with this technology has been built in Tabasco, Mexico, and consists of 50 houses. The houses are made with the collaboration of ICON, a construction technology company. Thanks to its 3D Vulcan printer, which uses a cement mix called Lavacrete, it can build secure and durable constructions with very little time, as 3D printers can work uninterruptedly for 24 hours, until completion of construction. End touches, such as roofs or windows, are added in the traditional way, employing local builders.

Families living in these early Mexican dwellings previously participated in the process of designing their home, bringing their vision of their own needs and what they thought important to have at home. These families were selected through interviews and surveys in the area, to identify those with the greatest need. The houses have a social mortgage of about 400 pesos per month, a mortgage that does not return to New Story, the sponsoring organization, but rather to a Community fund from which families will be able to dispose in the future to invest in this community. In this way, it not only innovates in the way it is built, but also creates a community of owners that empowers the people who are part of it.

New Story

Ipso, international service of psychosocial peer-to-peer support

Publications Bank of innovations

Ipso, international service of psychosocial peer-to-peer support

International Psychosocial Organization (Ipso)

Peer-to-peer counselling session. Retrieved from Ipso’s website.

International mental health service and psychosocial support for peer-to-peer which offers offline and online in more than 20 languages (such as Arabic, Farsi, Punjabi, among others), and which today has more than 200,000 beneficiaries, mostly people who are immigrants, refugees or victims of armed conflicts.

Ipso counsellors are other persons of the same origin who are previously formed in Value Based Counselling, a type of short-term intervention that seeks to establish empathy with the person concerned and to support them without prejudice. In addition, the sociocultural plurality that allows this methodology makes it easier to adapt it to different contexts and to give service to a very high and diverse number of users.

It is a peer-to-peer service, which serves to empower both parties, and which at the same time seeks to prevent the hardships or traumatic situations that have been experienced from becoming chronic or leading to more serious problems, while helping in social integration.

Ipso services have spread widely in some countries such as Afghanistan, where it is present throughout the country through the public health service. The training of the counsellors is done mainly in Germany, in the headquarters of Ipso in Berlin, Erfurt and Hamburg, where they prepare people who are immigrated to do so. In other countries, such as Jordan, Iraq, Haiti and others, the Ipso service has also been extended through collaborating organisations.

Psychosocial support sessions can be performed face-to-face but also online through a secure video platform called ipso-care.com, and this has allowed the territorial scope of Ipso to become much broader, and at the same time indispensable during the Covid-19 pandemic.

It is available in more than twenty languages, such as Arabic, Farsi, English, French, Russian, Turkish, Punjabi and others, because it is considered vitally important that people who receive this service can express themselves in their mother tongue.

International Psychosocial Organization (Ipso)

OKencasa, support for non-professional carers

Publications Bank of innovations

OKencasa, support for non-professional carers

OKencasa

Woman taking care of a dependent elderly man. Retrieved from OKencasa website.

Platform for the support aimed at non-professional carers caring a relative dependent at home. Through the Zaindoo app it offers permanent accompaniment from a care specialist, online training, tools for organizing care tasks, and discounts or advantages in services of physiotherapy, legal advice, home adaptation, etc. The aim is to improve the quality of life of the carers and to make their job easier, that is to say to look after the carers.

OKencasa periodically evaluates the physical, emotional and psychological well-being of the care-givers and, accordingly, offers them a personal plan of improvement and support that can be readjusted in time. The professionals in the service ensure that the caregiver is always accompanied and listened to with regard to the burden of their care tasks.

OKencasa also provides information to public social services so that they can provide better support for families and provide more efficient socio-sanitary care. The application is currently available in Euskera and Spanish.

OKencasa

Positive Sparks, platform to give voice to isolated or excluded young people

Publications Bank of innovations

Positive Sparks, platform to give voice to isolated or excluded young people

The Bytes Project

Youngsters participating in a face-to-face workshop from the project. Retrieved from Bytes’ website.

Youth participation platform which helps to give a voice to young people who are more isolated or excluded, to express their concerns, needs and opinion on the services offered by the community. The platform uses “Machine Learning” to analyse and interpret young people’s responses in a fast and automatic way.

In addition to empowering the most excluded young people and facilitating their participation, Positive Sparks allows social services and organisations working with young people with difficulties (mental health, drug abuse, school drop-out, etc.) to detect deficiencies in services, improve their interventions and identify new needs requiring new responses or services. The platform also offers the Public Administrations to use Positive Sparks for the development of youth-related public policies.

Within this initiative, more specific projects have emerged, such as Rural Sparks, which helps to give a voice to young people with difficulties in rural areas. On the other hand, Positive Sparks is not only a virtual platform, but also organizes workshops and presence activities to better meet young participants and to interact with them at first hand. Workshops are imparted by the Bytes organization in collaboration with other organizations, teaching centres, etc. It is currently a tool only available in English.

The Bytes Project

DigiContact, remote and immediate social care service available 24h

Publications Bank of innovations

DigiContact, remote and immediate social care service available 24h

DigiContact

DigiContact worker attending a client. Retrieved from the DigiContact website

Remote and immediate 24h care service for people with long-term care needs: disabled people, elderly people with dependency, people with mental health problems or addictions, etc. The service allows extra respite and support to these people’s non-professional carers, avoiding their saturation, and also offers them support if needed. Users can enrol in the service either individually or through social entities. The service adapts to the needs of each user (for example, calling to remind him of a medication, wake him up in the morning, etc.) according to what is established at the time of contracting the service; and, depending on the needs of the person, DigiContact complements online care with presence visits.

DigiContact works through an app that is very easy to use: only by pressing a button it does the call (with image) to be able to receive remote support and attention. The camera is located in the middle of the screen, making it easier to have a sense of proximity and making it possible for professionals to read the verbal and nonverbal signals of the user.

Professionals working in DigiContact (psychologists, nurses, social workers…) have a specialized training to meet all kinds of needs users can have online.

The DigiContact service has proved especially useful during the lockdown times of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is currently a service only available in Dutch.

DigiContact

Kuvu, intergenerational rent to fight the loneliness and precariousness of elderly people and youngsters

Publications Bank of innovations

Kuvu, intergenerational rent to fight the loneliness and precariousness of elderly people and youngsters

Kuvu

Intergenerational cohabitation thanks to Kuvu

Platform that brings into contact people older than 55 who have a free room, with young people seeking rent at affordable prices. In this way, these elderly people earn an income and stop living alone; while young people who want to become independent and do not have the means to do so, or prefer to do so in a calm and familiar environment, can achieve it for an affordable price.

Unlike other European models, where accommodation is free for the young in exchange for care activities, the Kuvu model involves an economic transaction and places those involved in a relationship of equal conditions and responsibilities, since these are two self-employed people who simply seek company and share day-to-day. Kuvu seeks to generate cohabitation and accompanying relationships, as would two roommates. Both people may have an independent life, but share some moments of the day with the other person. There is no set number of hours for participants to spend together, because the relationship is hoped to occur naturally.

In order to ensure that coexistence will be viable, at the time of registering on the platform, a form must be filled with information about living habits, so that Kuvu can pair the people who are most compatible for living together. In addition, Kuvu makes a personal follow-up to the experiences it generates to try to make them as successful as possible.

Kuvu

Outcomes Star, methodology for customizing and objectivising Social Services intervention

Publications Bank of innovations

Outcomes Star, methodology for customizing and objectivising Social Services intervention

Triangle

Working one-to-one with Outcomes Star. Retrieved from Outcomesstar.org.uk

Methodology to evaluate and plan customarily the transformation processes of people served by the Social Services. It is designed to be an integral part of social intervention, not a secondary tool; to achieve the most custom-like relationship between the person concerned and the professional using one-to-one work; and to adapt to their specific needs. It is a comprehensive social intervention formula, which allows users of the Social Services to be involved in all parts of their process and to measure their progress with objective indicators.

There are different star models, so the basic methodology can be applied to different services and social situations, by means of different indicators for each case. There are between 5 and 10 outcome areas, which are shared in a star-shaped diagram, making it a visual resource and easy to understand. These areas can be both positive and negative, allowing a visual map of the person’s life to be displayed and advised from their strengths and weaknesses. Each outcome area has a numerical scale (from 1 to 10 or 1 to 5) that is used to evaluate the initial situation of the person through objective criteria that are specified according to the type of service.

Outcomes Star allows the evaluation of the starting point of the given person, and from there the creation of an action plan and objectives based on the different areas of the star. The star is completed regularly to measure the change being produced and to readapt the action in the necessary cases. The collected data can be used for a specific case or interpreted as aggregated data to allow the overall evaluation of the results of a project or service.

To use Outcomes Star, is mandatory to buy the license and take the initial training provided by the company Triangle, which helps to achieve maximum performance and an adaptation of the methodology for each specific organization or service to be used.

Outcomes Star