D-Care Labs addresses the fundamental needs of home care beneficiaries, which are not satisfied by current social service providers. There are extensive requirements to fulfill needs e.g. as proper medical therapies and support for body hygiene, provision of adequate home facilities to prevent falls and measures to enable social inclusion of needy people into the local community.

Our project intends to address these challenges by establishing specialized macro-regional D-Care Lab innovation structures to enable social service providers, product developers and social start-ups to design and implement better and innovative home care services and products for elderly persons, people with disabilities and children with special needs.

The main objective of D-Care Labs is to strengthen the implementation of innovative social services in the domain of home care.

The Transnational Lab Strategy is based on an analysis of beneficiary needs (incl. needs caused by the Coronavirus), innovation potentials and intends to identify complementary interregional resources.

The main result of D-Care Labs is the establishment of a Transnational Lab of the Labs which will offer a framework for the incubation of the Regional Labs and a community of practice to increase mutual learning and transnational co-creation. The setup of ecosystems of social investment will provide financial and entrepreneurial support structures. During the pilot actions of 9 regional labs, innovation structures will be tested and improved.

D-Care Labs will help institutional actors and other stakeholders in the DTP to identify obstacles, develop and implement a plan to address them; improve institutional capacities, analyse the beneficiary needs and innovation potential as well as offer a framework for the incubation of regional labs.

The project uses methodology to facilitate the design/implementation of community-based home care innovations (regional D-Care Lab as bottom-up, integrative, need- and solution-oriented approach) and methods to encourage interregional collaboration and co-creation (Transnational Lab, community-building approaches). The project uses tools to involve relevant policy-actors of different levels to promote policy-change in the areas of social innovation and home care.

D-Care Labs project is co-funded by the European Union Funds (ERDF, IPA, ENI).

Social media accounts of D-Care Labs:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DCareLabsProject/

Twitter: @labs_care

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dcarelabs/

For more information turn to: office@zadecu.org

Project website link: http://www.interreg-danube.eu/approved-projects/d-carelabs

Programme: Interreg Danube Transnational Programme

Duration: 07/2020 – 12/2022

Partner countries: Germany, Hungary, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, Austria, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Moldova