Pro Aidants is engaged #FortheHelpers
Social infrastructure to provide right care for everyone in an ageing society
Zurich, 21 May 2019 – “Pro Aidants” was launched in Zurich Switzerland on Saturday May 18. This non-profit Swiss association closes a gap in long-term care and support at home. It is an organisation of working family carers in partnership with professional care service providers. The primary goal is to maintain a good quality of life for all care recipients.
For the first time, the social infrastructure presented by Pro Aidants establishes an organisational framework in which working family carers and the various service providers of care in old age coordinate themselves in a structure that is independent and politically neutral.
Care Coordination
In a pilot project, the “We+Care” assistance system will be made available for networking informal carers with professional caregivers, and new approaches to integrated care provisioning will be tested together with carers and pilot partners. In addition to the carers, the first members include Pro Senectute St. Gallen, a regional chapter of the largest social support organisation for older adults, Spitex Zürich Sihl, the fourth largest medical care and nursing organization and terzStiftung a regional end-user organization for a generation friendly vision of ageing.
“Care per-mille”
The use of the infrastructure is free of charge for those in need of help and care and for the carers. This gesture of appreciation is intended to pay tribute to the indispensable societal contribution of unpaid carers. Care service providers dedicate one thousand of their regular annual turnovers of the connected care services for the operation of the coordination platform: the “Care per-mille”.
Board of Directors
Thomas Diener, Managing Director, Pro Senectute Kanton St. Gallen; Peter Eckert, Head of Research and Nursing Development, Member of the Management Board of Spitex Zürich Sihl; Prof. Dr. Daniela Händler-Schuster, Institute for Nursing, ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences and Arts; Rolf Kistler, Head of Active Assisted Living, iHomelLab, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts; Stefan Kroll, Deputy Managing Director of terzStiftung; and Patrick Hofer, President of the We+Tech Association as Delegate of the Board of Directors were elected as members of the Pro Aidants Association.
Business Development
Richard Züsli, Careguide GmbH as Managing Director, Bruno Gantenbein, IT4Change AG, Dorothea Schlapbach, age network and Konstantinos Pappagiannopoulos, Codica Ltd. were elected as members of the Business Development Working Group.
Fundraiser #FortheHelpers
Among other agenda points, the Board of Directors was commissioned at the General Assembly to design the Associations’ governing and operating protocol in accordance with self-organizing management principles, to establish an operating company to provide the technical infrastructure and to execute a fundraising campaign for the carers in Switzerland.