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Published on: 29/06/2023Updated on: 29/06/2023
The MiCare project, coordinated by IPERIA and launched in November 2020, concluded with a final conference organized in Paris on June 19. Its purpose is to promote socio-professional integration of migrant populations in the dependency care and home support sector. We are developing an innovative professionalization pathway with our partners to create mutually beneficial connections between a foreign workforce and a high-demand sector in Europe. Here are the explanations.
MiCare: closely aligned with migrant skills
The MiCare logo speaks for itself: a house with the word MiCare -- an abbreviation of "Migrant" and "Care" -- written inside. This is indeed the challenge of this project led by IPERIA and supported by the European Commission under the Erasmus+ program: organizing the meeting between aging European populations, in their homes, with migrants trained in support professions. A significant challenge given language barriers, issues inherent to the five partner countries (France, Austria, Spain, Italy, and Finland), and tensions surrounding migration issues.
Annie Vidal, Deputy of the 2nd constituency of Seine-Maritime and engaged in "building a society of aging well together", emphasized at the MiCare conference the obligation to "ensure that this support from migrants for elderly people is of high quality." A statement echoed by Nadège Turco.
Our Deputy Director addressed the prejudices that needed to be cleared away with this project: "Starting from the assumption that people have nothing, come from nowhere, and need to be trained from A to Z is false. When you arrive from a third country, you automatically have life experience, knowledge, and skills. So we asked ourselves: couldn't we create a skills positioning tool to allow us to look at the experience people already have, their qualities, their skills, and those they lack? What kind of pathway support can we offer? Our choice is individualization to reach the profession and enter homes under the best conditions."
Self-assessment, measuring knowledge and skills
This individual support in MiCare has been realized by designing a tool for professional positioning. This enables the evaluation of migrant workers' knowledge and skills, identification of missing competencies, and proposal of specific training to acquire them. To achieve this, candidates answer an online questionnaire integrated into an interactive digital platform, translated into all partner languages, which includes:- Self-assessment questions to measure migrant women's confidence level in their abilities
- Evaluation questions to objectively measure pre-existing knowledge and skills
Sector-specific career guidance and development consulting developed by IPERIA
This pathway dynamic at the heart of the MiCare project relies on the sector-specific career guidance and development consulting (COEPS) developed by IPERIA to offer candidates relevant and local support. This COEPS is also at work in the Lab Migration and in the second phase of the REVA experiment for overhauling the Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) system. The objectives are:
For this, IPERIA takes the necessary time to review the candidate's background (professional and personal experiences, studies, etc.) and their future expectations, as well as to build a relationship of trust.- Supporting candidates in positioning themselves in a profession aligned with their aspirations and capabilities through our professional positioning tool
- Prescribing a personalized professionalization pathway enabling them to acquire and/or validate basic skills and then build their skill development through regular monitoring
Deep knowledge of professions, availability, listening skills, empathy, and benevolence are all essential qualities and skills for supporting uninitiated audiences from different backgrounds. "We look at skills, we build pathways," concludes Nadège Turco, on behalf of IPERIA teams, determined to provide optimal support toward professionalization.
Want to know more? Consult MiCare.
