Building AI-supported dementia-care training for vocational educators across Europe

What’s the project about?

Dementia affects a growing number of people across Europe, and the staff who care for them, from nursing assistants to social care workers, often have limited access to specialist training. 

AI4D-Care is a three-year Erasmus+ project bringing together seven partners from Denmark, Greece, Germany, Italy, Romania and Belgium to close that gap.

The project is developing a shared competence framework for dementia-care education, an AI-driven simulation platform that lets trainee carers practise realistic scenarios safely, and an online training course for vocational trainers. 

The aim is to give VET teachers the confidence and tools to deliver ethical, practice-based training that improves both digital readiness and the quality of dementia care across the sector. 

Funded by Erasmus+ Programme (Cooperation Partnerships in Vocational Education and Training, KA220-VET), coordinated by SOSU Østjylland, Denmark.

The Tavistock Institute’s work package

Through our German hub, Tavistock Institut gGmbH, we will lead work package 6: evaluation, risks and ethics. This work package is responsible for making sure the whole project is delivered to a high standard and in an ethically sound way.

In practice, our team will:

• develop a quality assurance and evaluation plan, with the indicators and templates the whole partnership uses to check its work
• create an ethics and data protection framework covering the responsible use of AI in dementia-care training, GDPR compliance, and consent processes for everyone taking part in pilots
• produce interim and final evaluation reports assessing how well the project is meeting its goals, using a realist evaluation approach that looks at what works, for whom, and why, drawing on TIHR’s expertise in systems psychodynamics and socio-technical systems thinking.

How this fits into our work

This project builds on our long-standing experience evaluating training and education programmes for professionals working with vulnerable populations, including older people and those with cognitive impairments. 

The work draws on our track record of arts-based approaches to dementia care: our German hub has previously worked with Wellcome Collection, London, on a street theatre performance with older adults. We also co-curated Echoes at Home, an exhibition at Tower Bridge Care Home with Entelechy Arts that won a British Sociological Association award for best arts-based storytelling. 

AI4D-Care extends this interest in person-centred, evidence-based care into the emerging space of AI-supported training.