Integrated Community-Based Home Care Service Provision And Healthy Ageing

With the purpose of assisting the State bodies in social support and health care fields to decrease social vulnerability of the people in need, as well as improving health of people in communities, the Armenian Red Cross Society (ARCS) launched a new project since October 2016, which is a new model of elderly care.

The project is being implemented with the Swiss and Monaco Red Crosses and focuses on the problems of elderly, disabled and people with chronic diseases, by introducing integrated system of medico social home care. Lori and Shirak were the targeted regions, and Vayots dzor region was included in 2020. 

The project aims to improve quality of life of the elderly, the disabled and the persons with chronic disease, by improving access to integrated medico social services. Preliminary studies have shown that the old people and people with less abilities want to have a dignified life and as much as autonomy as possible by staying at home as long as possible, receiving care and assistance covering their specific and individual needs, being integrated in community life and able to realise their potential and skills, as well as influence their own life and life of their communities.

The main directions of the project are:

• building a sustainable system of integrated home care provision with nurses, home helpers and volunteers;
• mobilization of community and promoting the concept of active and healthy ageing;
• strengthening organizational capacities of ARCS to play an active role in building up the “integrated community based home care system” and conducting community work in Armenia

This program is based on the positive experience of Swiss Red Cross on implementation of  home care system and participatory  community work in a number of countries (Bulgaria, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Moldova, and Kyrgyzstan), which shows that the combination of the two components is very important if we are interested to achieve long-term changes.  

At the first stage of the program, the main beneficiaries are lonely elderly or old people living alone, people with chronic illnesses and disabilities. There are  overall  around 100 beneficiaries and at least 10 initiative community groups from each region. In 2021, 500 people in total receive ths ervice in all 3 regions.

Criteria of the selection of the beneficiaries, as well as the list of potential beneficiaries will be presented after the initial Baseline survey in the regions.