INNOVATEDIGNITY aimed to develop a generation of thought leaders with transferable skills to deliver innovations in dignified, sustainable care systems for older people, including new care models and digital applications. INNOVATEDIGNITY’s research examines older peoples' perspectives with specific focus on dignity, investigates the potential for digital applications, and analyses gender to provide crucial, knowledge for fit for purpose care for older people to live well. INNOVATEDIGNITY addresses the European problem of how ageing people can live well in caring systems though four key areas:
1) Evaluating existing care systems and provide analyses that make use of older persons’ insights. 2) Examine conditions necessary to develop new innovations, including digital technology that offer dignity in care. 3) Provide an analysis of impacts of care models on the wellbeing of older people. 4) Examine impacts of gender on care delivery, on the leadership of caring and careers and the care workforce with focus on sustainability.
Our conclusions point to: investment in approaches that consider the whole person, which increases a sense of autonomy to ensure older people in Europe have the care support they need to live independent, fulfilling lives. Ensuring older people retain a sense of freedom to continue to engage in what is important to them in life. There is an urgent need to reframe, rethink and reflect again on the narrative that ageing is all about decline. Studies concluded that emotional support is as important to as practical support, effortless non-purposeful activities in care alongside care givers are essential.
Transitions between care settings are not sufficiently managed with negative impacts on older people, their families and professional carers.
The benefits and challenges of adopting digital technology are complex, and older people experienced digital technology as both helpful and the precise opposite, often negatively impacting identity, reinforcing stereotypes of older people as incompetent technology users and potentially increasing marginalisation. Therefore, innovations do not necessarily improve wellbeing for older generations.
Care systems need to be able to offer more than 'bare bones' care, more than observed minimum necessary aspects as care quality is found to be relational and relies on trustworthiness.
Promoting care as relationship with principles that can meet the human needs of older people (emotional and practical) requires a focus on care as relationship and this is not the same as workforce planning, staffing and skill mix. A sustainable, stable workforce is not currently available and this approach needs further investment.
Education for care leadership that is lifeworld led with training for support staff provides one potential direction for policy. Integration not fragmentation: The problems of fragmentation have manifest through several contexts and all research projects, this is a ‘red thread’ problem that is worsening. Bureaucratic splits, complex service delivery, organisational factors, divisions of responsibilities, multiple systems- some competitive, and the advent of diverse interoperable digital solutions add to this worsening complex challenge. Digital innovation can potentially add to care and wellbeing but it requires careful integration rather than simple implementation.
