Context and purpose

Elder care is facing new challenges. Europe's aging population is in need of care and is described as multisick with various mental and physical illnesses. In addition there are functions such as quality assurance and documentation of care work in different ways. This requires different and deeper skills of the care workers, but also of institutions to prepare for development. Learning is considered important both for the organization and the individual. It provides the opportunity for a meaningful work that can enhance people's wellbeing and developmental opportunities, and also increase employability. Trade unions argue for the individuals' learning with reference to a justice and democracy. Care workers as a group has low formal education and to participate in skills development is not seen as something obvious. Workplace learning with planned learning activities have been shown to be beneficial even for groups with low formal education. Learning activities in this study incorporates informal as well as non-formal and formal activities in the workplace or in connection to the workplace. An important question will be how the care workers can deepen and broaden their skills?

The main purpose of the study is to describe the learning activities offered and the conditions for learning in the workplace. Focus is both on staff´s subjective experiences of enabling and constraining factors, and objective obstacles and opportunities for learning.

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