DiKomP

Period: 01.04.2023 - 31.03.2026

Overall project

The ‘DiKomP’ project researches and promotes digital education in the care sector. The project's target groups are both professional caregivers and local stakeholders who are responsible for the information and advisory needs of people with care needs and their relatives.

Due to the project's focus on different target groups, the two scientific project partners, the University of Applied Sciences Vorarlberg and the Bavarian Centre for Digital Health and Social Care, will carry out the respective research activities in a collaborative but complementary manner.

This is done in close co-operation with the practical partners at Sozialdienste Götzis and Caritas Altenhilfe Konstanz.

Other relevant practice partners from the regions of Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg and Vorarlberg as well as institutions operating nationwide will be successively included in the course of the project.

Subproject

Supporting people with care needs and their relatives in the digital transformation

As care is predominantly provided (initially) at home and is mostly provided by family caregivers, identifying and harnessing the potential of digitalisation is also highly relevant in this area. However, the necessary knowledge and information services are not yet widespread.

In the context of municipal services of general interest, this has implications for those involved in the local support and care structure, which relate to specific needs and requirements with regard to counselling and educational services for people with care needs and their relatives. Although individual offers/measures on the topic of digitalisation exist in the municipalities, there remains the complex task of conceptually adapting a large number of different fields of action in the context of care and nursing to the digital transformation.

For this reason, the DiKomP project aims to raise awareness among relevant municipal actors from the counselling and education landscape in selected regions to the topic and support them in individual cases in order to strengthen the structural prerequisites for access to and use of digital and assistive technologies locally for the target group of people with care needs and their caregivers.

To this end, selected municipal stakeholders will be supported in (further) developing the existing counselling and support concepts based on their specific area of responsibility in the various regions. In terms of an innovative care structure, the aim is to provide impetus for anchoring digital transformation processes increasingly locally and in a targeted manner in the municipal concepts for the care sector.

The research design is qualitative, participatory and transdisciplinary. The aim is to work together with partners from municipal practice on concepts and solutions. In addition to qualitative methods of empirical social research (expert interviews, focus groups, participant observation), co-creative approaches will also be used to support the transfer between science and practice and will be oriented towards the respective question and the associated information and cooperation needs of the actors.

Ultimately, the aim is also to identify the transfer potential that can be derived both within and between the different regions. To this end, cross-border cooperation and networking activities will be encouraged.