Project Ciao! Connects non-sufficient elderly residing at Italian nursing homes with their families and communities. The first aim is to keep them company, improving their quality of life and to stay connected with the “outside world” via interactive and live contents tailormade for them (e.g. “silver yoga” lessons, concerts, digital live tours trips and tours; maquillage lessons; theatrical pieces; art therapy sessions) and the second is help them preserving their cognitive capability.
During the pandemic, the access to Italian nursing houses was severely limited (sometimes even forbidden), causing prolonged isolation to their guests. Amplifon Foundation provided the nursing homes with very high-quality video-presence systems. The purpose was to help them to restore a fully emotional dialogue with their beloved ones thanks to the super high quality of images and sound. The systems provided are state of the art tech (the same used by Queen Elisabeth and Pope Francis) and equipped with 27-inch-wide screen and excellent audio systems. Besides, video-call with the families, the nursing houses used uch high quality connection systems to restore community initiatives such meeting; long-distance volunteering activities and more: these activities were found to be vital for the old people during the COVID lockdown as long as they kept the elderly “connected”. Therefore, the Foundation decided to scale up the project and to change the technology provided expanding the dimension of the telepresence system for them to be used together by a group of people (from 27 to 85-inch-wide screen), but keeping the top-quality approach. The social connection was to be extended from family to community level by developing a set of contents and activities specifically design for the project target group. The aim of such activities was preserving their cognitive capability, improving their quality of life and to stay connected with the “outside world” via interactive and live contents tailormade for them: silver yoga lessons, concerts, theatrical pieces; digital and real time trips, maquillage lessons, etc. In the first phase of the project 50 nursey homes were connected and participated to the various activities. At the same time, the Foundation promotes and supports community-based initiatives that generate spontaneously from the care house ecosystem of volunteers, schools, local stakeholders and promoting dialogue among the nursing houses that are part of the project.
Please highlight how the project can be exemplary in this context
The project has obtained unexpected results. It was conceived to connect families during the covid times and is currently a massive real-time and live program, involving communities.
The project embodies the principle of the sustainability because it has been conceived to
- Facilitate the connection among people located in different places maintain and improve life quality for the elderly resident of the nursing houses (cfr. SDG 3 – Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages)
- create inclusive spaces and activities, to be activated even in ordinary (day-by-day life) and extraordinary (pandemic times) (cfr. SDG 11 – Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable).
Please highlight how the project can be exemplary in this context
The audio and video quality are a crucial element of the project considering that a large number of elderlies have often some impairments.
Our objective is to rethink the relationship between the elderly residents and the outside world using top-class technology (i.e., Samsung 75’-85’ maxiscreen + Cisco Webex videoconference system). The use of leading technology with the highest video and audio quality is fundamental to allow full and emotional relationships between the elderly and their families during video calling, the same goes for the group activities.
We also aim at reconnecting people and to capitalize and expose the value of their work especially when it comes to care givers and social workers in the nursing homes. The involvement of these people was crucial to guarantee the best experience for the elderly.
Please highlight how the project can be exemplary in this context
Project Ciao! was born during the Covid emergency to support the senior living in residential care homes forced into a lockdown situation. The goal pursued is the social inclusion of the senior, as long as the Projects is a program to bridge the isolation of the elderly in the nursing homes. The underlaying principles:
- digital connection: digitalized the nursing homes, which are typically disconnected and very far from any form of innovation.
- digital education: the support granted to the nursing homes include the training of the operators working in there, hence making them fully capable to manage the innovative technology also for purposes different from the originals (e.g. replacement of medical visits of to the Tribunal with video-call; digitalization of the meetings etc.)
- accessibility: the non-self-sufficient elderly – not only in term of physical accessibility and also those with cognitive impairment- are put in the condition to join entertainment’ contents.
- inter-generationality: the Project facilitates the relationship between different generations as it enables the dialogue thanks to the “Racconti tra Generazioni” (Tales/Stories between Generations): a format within the Ciao! Project, in which an old is interviewed by a young and shares his/her own experiences and expertise.
Please highlight how this approach can be exemplary
Ciao! Main objective is to improve the quality of life of those living in the Italian nursing home by creating a sense of community and a sort of re-connection to the social dimension of life.
We believe our actions are sustainable as the initial investment carried out by the project will be capitalized by the target groups as it becomes the instrument for the execution of multiple activities to be carried out by each single nursing homes. The environmental footprint of the project is also very limited as the impact is very low both in terms of emissions as well as in terms of resources exploitation.
As per the aesthetic part we reckon this as the core aspect of the project. The quality of the video and sound connection is the key element for a fantastic and realistic user experience that allows our activities to be effective in terms of cognitive improvement by the elderly guests.
Furthermore, classical music, theatre and art in general represents beauty by definition and such beautiful shows brings benefits to our target group.
The combination of technology, elderly and competent care givers can ensure social interaction, reaching a dimension of social inclusion, especially for a category of people often forgotten to which is given back the possibility to relate with others, not only family members, and return to experience recreational activities.
Amplifon Foundation applies for the category: “Prioritising the places and people that need it the most” and Regaining a sense of belonging
- “Prioritising the places and people that need it the most” - During covid-19 emergency, nursing houses were undoubtedly hit the hardest. Elderly residents could not receive visits, nor be engaged in any activity as it used to be before. These difficulties cause their mood and mental health to worsen. Even during the recovery phases of the emergency, the nursing homes remained isolated places, where life is “still” and nothing seems to change. Our project brings new ideas and contents to an ecosystem which is often neglected by the general public.
- Regaining a sense of belonging - Amplifon Foundation works hard on the concept of “community”. We support initiatives aimed at connecting care workers of the nursing homes taking part in the Project, with the goal of sharing ideas and best practices. We also want our beneficiaries to feel special, and often they witness themselves how every activity that we plan is tailormade for them. With the aim of making them feel unique and important we also collect their life stories.
Insofar, the figures are the following: 50 nursing houses taking active part in “Ciao!” during the first phase of the project ended in July 2021; 2h per week Silver Yoga lessons (Tuesday and Friday); 10 appointments with the Gino Franzi Company; 8 LaFil – Filarmonica di Milano Concerts; 5 art-therapy sessions; 5000 elderly reached today by the Project. The Foundation drafts periodic reports to monitoring the participation of the facilities in the activities. The last reports demonstrate an increasingly percentage of the use of the technology which is around 78%. In addition, an impact analysis evaluation of the project is ongoing in partnership with Bocconi University.
Please also explain the benefits that derived from their involvement.
Amplifon Foundation conducted a series of meetings and interviews with representatives and associations to design an intervention that can contribute in improving the conditions of those living in nursing homes. The interviews confirmed what emerged from the analysis of secondary sources and offered useful ideas for the construction of a partnership project that targets a significant number of Structures all over Italy. The interviews with key actors have shown that the elderly guests of the structures are rarely in contact with the outside world and that in many structures the activities of socialization, animation, entertainment can and must be strengthened and the guests should be more involved as they are people with still an ongoing life project. As the identified problem concerns in the first place the guests and the quality of their life inside the reception structures we have also involved in our assessment the staff of the Structures who share the daily life of the elderly guests. Project Ciao! and Amplifon Foundation have succeeded in bringing together very diverse partners:
- UNEBA, second level national association of more than 700 no profit nursing homes, with a role of Selection and involvement of nursing homes
- La Fil – Filarmonica di Milano was the Classical Music provider
- Cisco, leading company for technology and infrastructures, was the Telepresence provider
- Durante, tech services company, was the provider for technical assistance
- Samsung, tech company, provided screens
- Università Bocconi: CERGAS, research center at Bocconi University, with the role of M&E
- Mondo Yoga, yoga association, yoga lessons provider
- Local authorities, City halls and regional government officer provided analysis, focus groups, facilitation
- Nursing homes personnel: the support of operators and doctors, as long as they gave us continuous feedback on the needs and preferences of the elderly and provided exchange of the experience between the nursing homes.
The COVID-19 pandemic had a great negative impact on nursing homes, with massive outbreaks being reported in care facilities all over the world, causing the residents to isolate and distance from the outside world. Social isolation, loneliness and boredom were the most common outcomes due to the situation, especially in Italy, one of the hardest hit countries all over the world. The project started out as a pilot with the involvement of 10 care homes in Milan and later expanding throughout the Lombardy region. Given the benefits of Ciao!, the project was subsequently expanded to connect 50 care homes across Italy by July 2021.
According to the 1st Report of the Long-Term Care Observatory of Bocconi University, only 47% of nursing homes report that they have introduced any kind of technological innovation. It also emerges how the most common type of innovation consist in apps and mobile devices, i.e., technologies that are now considered "traditional" since they represent a widely used standard in many areas.
Digitalizing and bringing technology into the nursing house environment is an ambitious task, as we are prone to think of that world as a static one. Ciao! project is the concrete demonstration of how high-level technologies can have unimaginable benefits also for an uncommon target like the elderly, allowing them to enjoy leisure time in a complete new and innovative way.
Please provide clear documentation, communication of methodology and principles in this context.
The potential of Ciao! project consist in its scalability and adaptability. In fact, given the different contexts that we find in other European countries when it comes to long term care, the project could easily be exported abroad. Some of the content that we create for the project (yoga, Classical Music) has no language and therefore knows no barrier.
Media coverage of the first phase of the project Ciao!
134 articles (28 offline, 104 online and 2 tv interviews)
@ClarissaBrivio, 2020
Content licensed to the European Union.