Demographic change is an Europe wide phenomenon influencing every aspect of social life. Consequences and problems for the job market will be felt and must be anticipated. Demographic change is subject of investigation and conceptional consideration for the industry. A changing age distribution pattern of a society demands to keep employees fit for work for a longer time. An important instrument to achieve this is continuing education and advanced training. Further, life long education helps to keep up motivation, capability to work and flexibility of the employee and gives the chance to use his/her personal and work experience.

Even though the social sector (e.g. care for elderly and handicapped people) is not only affected by the demographic change because of older employees but also because of older clients there are still only single projects (especially care for elderly people). Carried out projects mainly involved health prevention as well as the areas of work structure, organisation and work schedules but no systematic approach to the problem. Apart from that it is necessary to emcompass the demographic change with strategies involving active human resource development and a plan for lifelong continuing education and to impemtate this into strategies of personell development. Especially the social sector suits for environments of intergenerative learning with methods of selfdirected Learning.

Younger and elder employees are different in their working- and educational biographies and have different strenghts and weaknesses; they have high potentials in sharing their individual competences and supporting each other.
This includes a high potential of ressources for workers and institutes and will be very helpfull for facing the challenges of the demographic changes in the next years.

Two areas 1) stationary care for elderly people; 2) stationary care for handicapped people are to be analysed, or - if you prefer - the sector child/youth care. Since the content of qualification is controlled by the professional organizations, the project will have a closer look at the personal, methodical and social capabilities (e.g. self-management, integration and capability of learning) of the employees. A „diversity" approach will be used to highlight the potentials of the elder employees instead of emphasizing their faults. The project aims to raise awareness for younger and elderly employees and to a self-determined definition of qualifying needs.

1) Project Management
2) Sensitization of employers, social-partners, charity-groups, local councils, educational institutions, professional institutions, local government departments and trade public to the effects of the demographic change on the demands of employees in the social sector and the chances and potentials of self-directed, lifelong learning and age-diversity:
- A report of the current situation (data collection and analysis of studies done by research institutes in 4 countries in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain)
- Analysis of best-practices (examples from the 4 countries)
- Analysis of age-structure in the institutes of stationary care for elderly people and stationary help for handicapped people/ or: youth/child care (50-100 empoyees)
- Result: European report of the current situation: 50 pages, 4 languages, publication.
- Result: flyer (abstract of the report: 5-10 pages)
- Information-Campaign in 4 countries

3) Development of profiles regarding abilities and requirements of all employees in the institutes
- Installation of qualification circles in each institute (4 meetings) with members of employees, management, personnel department, workers council et al and important representatives of labour union, social partners, employment centers etc. Result: Profile of demand for the institute
- Competence-Check (inquiries in written form of 50-100 employees, self-assessment of their potantials and competences): Instrument-Development by ffg Dortmund, realization in 5 instituts in 4 countries
- Future-Workshop (One day) with 20-30 persons out of all employees. Question: „Which effects does demographic change have and how will it influence our work in the future?"
- Interviews in groups (10-15 persons of different function, age and sex), questioned about their working and educational biographies.

4) Development and testing of the qualification-concepts
- 4 more meetings of the qualification circles (above-mentioned) Result: Definition of the qualification-needs of the institutes and escorted training
- Development of a training-concept (mentioned in 2), including self-directed learning, age diversity and competence development, to conserve employability of all employees. A research institute for education will be assigned to provide the scientific funding.
- Trainer Workshops: training of 10-15 trainees to conduct „Compliment-Concept" (one day)
- Pilot-Training in 5 institutions in 4 countries: 16 units for 4h with one training group each consisting of 10-15 persons of varying age.

4) European compendium „Competence Development und Age Diversity" on CD-ROM

5) Monitoring and Evaluation:
- by expert group in Germany with different partners (charity groups, institutes for advanced training and education, consultants, employer representation): 6 meetings in 2 years
- regularly (monthly) reports to the project partners (monitoring)
- evaluation of the trainer-workshops and the pilot-education by ffg Dortmund

6) Distribution and Mainstreaming
- Public Relation Work in all countries and Internet
- International Conference: 10/2007
- National Conference: 06-07/2008
- Flyer to distribute the concept of the project
- Europewide Distribution of the CD-ROM (5 languages)