Identification of Educational Needs of Activation Workers in the Context of Professional Competences

Introduction

A very important part of care for clients in homes for the elderly is the offer of programs for spending free time and their stimulation and activation, collectively referred to as activation activities. The workers providing these activities are activation workers, who also participate in care by introducing activities to support leisure time and the activation of seniors into care plans.

The activation of seniors is a very important part of their care in homes for the elderly. "It serves to stimulate the potential (internal predispositions) of seniors, while contributing to their physical and mental health and overall quality of life. Activation programs are focused on intervention in the area of maintaining skills, knowledge, abilities, or on the prevention of memory, concentration and thinking disorders in seniors." (Průcha and Veteška, 2014, p. 27).

Clients in homes for the elderly have enough free time and have the opportunity to use pedagogical, educational and activation programs offered according to their interests (Pavkova, 2014, In Vinsalia, 2021). There are always some physical activities prepared for them, corresponding to the capabilities of seniors, activities to support mental activities and cultural and social activities. The activation of seniors is one of the basic goals in the implementation of care for seniors. Care is of course individualized, where the individualization of care for seniors is an important element of the care complex, enabling support and activation of seniors based on knowledge from their previous life, continuously supporting their interests and providing them with social impulses within their communication with family and other residents of the home for the elderly.

In terms of the importance of the socializing function of activation, joint activities of seniors are preferred. Working with seniors with dementia (seniors with cognitive impairment) or other serious illnesses requires a specific approach." (Průcha and Veteška, 2014, p. 27). For more on health and illness, see e.g. Kalvach (2004), Holmerová et al. (2014) and Vostrý, Veteška et al. (2021 and 2022).

According to Macháčková, Holmerová et al. (2019), old age can also be viewed from the perspective of creating a suitable "environment where aging will be good – not only for current seniors. But later for each of us… From the perspective of long-term sustainability, it is not only about ensuring an environment for good aging, but above all about accepting responsibility for one's own aging process and conscious care for physical and mental health throughout life." (p. 13). Špatenková and Smékalová (2015) add a key condition for successful aging, namely active and productive involvement of the individual in society.

In the case of activities for seniors, their part always includes support for seniors' self-sufficiency, maintaining their mental freshness and overcoming any handicaps they may suffer from. An integral part of senior activation always includes pedagogical, andragogical and gerontagogical elements, along with a certain degree of didactics and systematicity, which enable the support of seniors and animation of their stay in homes for the elderly (Veteška, 2017).

When activating seniors in homes for the elderly, the workers implementing this part of care cannot be overlooked. Activation workers must be able to adapt not only to the upcoming social, technological and generational development associated with the turnover of seniors in homes for the elderly, but above all to the transfer of new knowledge in the field of care for the elderly. It is therefore an important part of the management of homes for the elderly to determine the educational needs of the organization, especially for activation workers, since in their work process there is less transfer of new knowledge, which is mostly associated with direct and health care in homes for the elderly.

Currently, the educational profile of an activation worker is not described in any detail, and therefore neither are the requirements for their functional job description linked to specific requirements for their professional and further education. The same applies to individual activation workers in homes for the elderly and descriptions of their job function. This makes it all the more important that the management of homes for the elderly works to ensure that activation workers have the opportunity to continuously educate themselves.

Higher demands are placed on activation workers in homes for the elderly for the performance of their job function, yet the qualification requirements for them are exactly the same as for a social services worker. However, from the perspective of experience from everyday practice in homes for the elderly, where the activity of these workers has a pedagogical character in many respects, there is a need for these workers to have higher qualifications that include additional elements from pedagogy, andragogy and gerontagogy (Veteška, 2017), or andragogical counseling (Pavlov, 2021).

Further professional education and development of workers in social services

Workers in homes for the elderly belong to the so-called helping professions. This term is used in professional literature to refer to workers who operate in areas of human activity related to helping others and working for them, whether in some crisis situations, but also in the area of pedagogical and educational activities. These professions are described more specifically by Matoušek (2003), who states that the helping professions include those that are based on medicine, psychology, pedagogy and also social work.

The importance of education and development of social services workers lies in adaptation to continuous development and the transfer of knowledge in the area of direct and health care for the elderly. Methods of caring for clients in social services are essentially an intersection of health, direct and social care and thus also an intersection of psychological, nursing and therapeutic methods, and their quality depends on the way they are implemented. The area of elderly care is continuously evolving and modern knowledge from this field penetrates relatively quickly into everyday practice; for this reason too, it is important that activation workers continuously further educate themselves.

Care for the elderly always goes hand in hand with consideration for their personality, character and interests, as well as their health and psychological disadvantages or capabilities. This must also be reflected in the further professional education of workers in homes for the elderly. Further education of workers in homes for the elderly should not neglect the education of workers in the field of andragogy and gerontagogy (Veteška, 2016). Two educational disciplines deal with senior issues with regard to clear specificities in the psychosocial, economic and cultural areas. Andragogy examines in particular the processes of how seniors are able to learn and what different forms of learning are suitable, beneficial and effective for them in terms of style (Veteška, 2016, 2017 and 2018; Vostrý, Veteška et al., 2021). The basis of senior activation is always the effort to maintain their cognitive abilities for as long as possible to support their ability to orient themselves in their environment and time.

Holmerová et al. (2007) state that cognitive training consists of various types of exercises that help improve the functioning of individual levels of cognitive functions (which usually include mainly memory, orientation, verbal production, visuospatial functions, etc.). The aim of these partial activities is to improve individual abilities and thus reduce the problems that usually occur in connection with various forms of dementia. Selected activities implemented within cognitive training include, for example, regular reading with simple text analysis, or repetition of main ideas. Learning foreign languages is also suitable. Cognitive training primarily exercises short-term memory, but long-term, auditory and visual memory are also developed (Vostrý, Veteška et al., 2021), which overall contributes to effective holistic cognitive rehabilitation.

The development of workers through professional education in homes for the elderly is an equally important part of personnel work and the means for this is corporate education. What is specific to homes for the elderly is that this often happens through the form of a learning organization and partially through informal exchange of information and knowledge in everyday practice. It is therefore entirely significant that the key discipline used at the application level by experts in human resource development (HR specialists and corporate andragogues) is adult education, or its component referred to as professional education (Veteška, 2016).

The possibilities of homes for the elderly in the area of leisure time and activities for seniors are almost unlimited. In the case of activities for seniors, their part always includes support for seniors' self-sufficiency, maintaining their mental freshness and overcoming any handicaps they may suffer from. An integral part of senior activation are – and should be – pedagogical, andragogical and gerontagogical elements, which enable the support of seniors and their effective activation and animation within homes for the elderly (Veteška, 2017).

Matoušek et al. (2020) state that for the performance of the profession of an activation service worker for seniors, it is essential that the worker possesses a number of prerequisites. Among the most important, they mention formal qualification obtained through study at a university or higher vocational school in the field of social work; necessary knowledge about the given social service, the issues of the target group, their specific needs and ways of compensating for possible handicaps, knowledge of the law on social services and other legislation related to the provision of social services, and orientation in the network of social services. It is also very important that the worker possesses communication skills, self-reflection, flexibility, openness, the ability to cooperate, teamwork, independence and patience, and the ability to plan, organize and think in a structured manner. Attitudes and value orientation are also desirable. Here Matoušek et al. (2020) include respect for the mission, values and ethical code, respect, discretion, trust, confidentiality, tolerance and partnership towards clients.

The activities provided by activation workers have a very wide range, spanning from handicraft activities, through artistic and intellectual activities, to physical education. Higher demands are placed on activation workers in homes for the elderly for the performance of their job function, yet the qualification requirements for them are exactly the same as for a regular social services worker. In a certain sense, this is logical, because even an activation worker must be able to manage client care, as they work in regular operations with other workers in a multidisciplinary team and clients need comprehensive care, including leisure activities.

Research on the competency of activation workers and their further professional education

The topic of the research presented below is the identification and analysis of competences of activation workers in homes for the elderly. The aim of the research is to create a competency model for the activation worker, identify educational needs and propose further professional education for the activation worker.

The issue of competency of activation workers in homes for the elderly has not been systematically addressed over the long term. In practice, it usually comes down to the fact that activation workers generally do not have a prescribed professional education, nor advanced training, and their professional competency significantly depends on their individual interests and motivation to further develop professionally, whether in terms of deepening or increasing qualifications.

Their practical functioning depends on the individual requirements for these workers, and their professional competency, competences set by the home management, as well as further professional development or requirements for further education, correspond accordingly.

Formally, the only qualification requirement for an activation worker is completed primary education and completion of a caregiving course. The course itself is theoretically and practically focused on direct care services for clients in homes for the elderly and only very marginally on the activation of seniors.

The purely practical goal of our research is then, based on this research in homes for the elderly, to establish a competency model for the activation worker created from knowledge gained by examining opinions and perspectives on the performance of the activation worker's job function from the viewpoint of the activation workers themselves, as well as managers of homes for the elderly and their insights, but also from the requirements of everyday practice.

The research itself is qualitative and its design is based on an approach referred to as grounded theory. Grounded theory represents a set of inductive procedures for conducting qualitative research, relying on the systematic collection of data about the phenomenon it represents and the analysis of these phenomena. The qualitative approach is suitable for situations where little is known about the subject to be analyzed, as is the case here.

The research method used is questioning through structured interviews and subsequent coding. The aim of the interview was to verify the correctness of the examination of selected and used concepts and topics. For data collection from the structured interviews conducted within the research and their subsequent comparison and evaluation, the method of profesiography was also used, relatively commonly applied when processing job descriptions or competency models in organizations, which focuses on the job function in a more user-oriented and practical way.

Methodologically, profesiography primarily refers to psychology and is close to qualitative research methods. Profesiographic investigations within their methods can examine those traits of a person's – worker's – personality that may affect the operation of the organization as a whole and the performance of the profession of a specific worker. It is commonly used in personnel work in organizations and in describing the requirements for the performance of a job function. The resulting profesiogram also has the character of a document with a qualitatively determined description of requirements for a specific worker (Vronský, 2012).

Research aim and methodology

As already indicated, the research itself aimed to answer the issue of competency of activation workers in homes for the elderly and the associated consequences related to the performance of their job function, i.e.:

• creating a competency model for the activation worker,
• identifying educational needs
• proposing further professional education for the activation worker.

The research questions essentially mirror the needs of organizations to have an adequately established description of the activation worker function, i.e. in the form of a competency model and the determination of their educational profile and requirements for their professional training, and they are:

1. What competences should an activation worker in a home for the elderly have in terms of performing their function?
2. What competences should they have as a person?
3. In what areas should an activation worker continuously educate themselves?

The result of the research should be a practically usable list of requirements for the activation worker and their professional and human profile. The established research paradigm is description and interpretation of answers to the appropriate setting of competences of the activation worker:

1. The professional qualification of activation workers must be viewed from two angles. From the employer's perspective and what they expect from this type of worker in terms of organizational placement at the level of the job function, and from the perspective of the worker's professional qualification, i.e., what they should master for the performance of their job function, what their knowledge, skills and work habits should be.
2. For the optimal performance of the activation worker's job function in accordance with the interests of the respective organization (in our case, the home for the elderly), it is necessary to address three problem areas in connection with the required qualification of activation workers, through research in practice in these basic areas: a) basic description of the activation worker's job function, b) setting of a general competency model for the activation worker, c) educational profile of the activation worker.

The framework of the conducted research corresponds to this, and it will develop precisely from this point, where it is necessary that the requirements for the activation worker are clearly summarized in practice, i.e., their formal, professional and expert (advanced) structure of competences, or the research framework is focused on examining the spectrum of requirements for the competency of activation workers and their qualification in practice.

The data collection should then serve and the knowledge should be used for three areas:

• examining the competences of activation workers in homes for the elderly,
• creating a competency model for the activation worker in a home for the elderly,
• subsequent creation of a qualification program for activation workers in homes for the elderly with elements of pedagogy and didactics, gerontagogy and specifics of senior education.

Given that the requirements for education and qualification of activation workers are not formally established even by the job catalog, and therefore the requirements for performance of this job function are always set independently by the organization in which the worker is to work, and also given that many heads of organizations do not have pedagogical or andragogical education, they do not realize the need for formal education of activation workers in didactics and methodology of activation work. Activation work always has a pedagogical and andragogical character in many respects.

Through this research, homes for the elderly should receive a tool for more precise determination of the job description of the activation worker, requirements for the selection of these workers and also partially for their, to a limited extent, remuneration.

The solution to the issue of setting competences and the competency model in this research will be based on knowledge from three areas of practice, i.e.:

• from findings from job descriptions of activation workers in homes for the elderly,
• from interviews with individual activation workers in homes for the elderly,
• from interviews with managers and directors of homes for the elderly and summarization of their requirements for the performance of the activation worker's job function.

In the interviews, we asked about these main research areas, from which further analysis and summarization of the collected data is derived. These are the following areas: 1. area – Professional competence (education, professional competences, work experience); 2. area – Performance competence (adaptability to increased performance, workload, stress and changes in working conditions); 3. area – Social competence (ability to cooperate, communicate, influence, manage); 4. area – Personal competence (ability to motivate, moral and volitional qualities, individuality).

Respondent group

The research group in the case of this dissertation consists of workers in homes for the elderly who either perform the job function of activation worker or determine their job description, i.e., managers or directors of homes for the elderly.

In addition, these workers should work in homes for the elderly where the work performance of activation workers, given the number of clients and number of employees, has a more sophisticated framework and takes place in cooperation with other workers of the home for the elderly. Their selection is stratified, because for examining the problem it is necessary that these two researched groups of workers meet the following criteria:

1. The home for the elderly should have more than 100 clients.
2. The home for the elderly should have more than 2 activation workers.
3. The interviewed directors should have more than 3 years of practice.
4. The interviewed activation workers should have more than 3 years of practice.

Data collection took place in the period August to September 2022 in ten homes for the elderly. Ten directors of homes and 24 activation workers were interviewed. Twenty-five homes for the elderly in the Ústí nad Labem Region (Czech Republic) were contacted; only 10 homes for the elderly permitted the actual research. The results of the conducted research based on the respondents' answers brought the following findings in the form of answers to the stated research questions.

1. What competences should an activation worker in a home for the elderly have in terms of performing their function?
2. What competences should they have as a person?
3. In what areas should an activation worker continuously educate themselves?

To answer the first research question, i.e., what competences should an activation worker in a home for the elderly have in terms of performing their function, it is necessary to define what the work of an activation worker fundamentally entails. It is not merely guiding seniors' leisure time in a home for the elderly. Their function is much more extensive, because not only must they devise and implement all activities for seniors, they must also secure and fulfill their supportive and activation framework for seniors, both in group and individual form.

They should therefore possess the following structure of competences: a) Knowledge of senior issues b) Knowledge and skills in communication with seniors and leading activities with them c) Knowledge of social work and care for the elderly d) Knowledge for working in a home for the elderly and in a team of home workers.

The answer to the second research question can be described as crucial for describing the personality of the activation worker as such and for building their ability to work with seniors. It is necessary to divide it into several parts: a) Social competences, i.e., the ability to perceive, care for, respect seniors as personalities and as clients at the same time. b) Personal competences, i.e., respect, empathy, sensitivity, willingness, kindness and understanding c) Creativity competences, i.e., inventiveness, vivacity and active listening to the needs of seniors.

For the answer to the third research question, it is necessary to summarize the answers from the inquiries to individual activation workers and heads of organizations: a) The education of activation workers should be comprehensive, logically structured and should encompass the complexity of the work and activation of seniors. b) Education should take the form of accredited study and should be concluded with a final graded examination and should be at least secondary level. c) In terms of content, education should include areas of social work, methods of caring for seniors, methods and techniques of senior activation, as well as acquisition of presentation and communication techniques. It should include knowledge from psychology, andragogy and gerontagogy and special pedagogy.

For the compilation of the competency model, we proceed from the finding that the activation worker should be personally oriented:

• towards working with seniors,
• socially towards helping and supporting this group
• should be able to create, organize and manage the activation of seniors.
• should be educated in the social field and working with seniors
• should be educated in andragogy and gerontagogy, as follows from the obtained findings.

The resulting findings on the competences of the activation worker are divided into areas that correspond to the researched areas of competence, i.e., professional, performance, social and personal, and are summarized in the table below.

Structure of competences for compiling the competency model of the activation worker

Similarly to the proposal for the structure of the competency model of the activation worker, the survey results provide sufficient information for compiling the structure of the education program for activation workers.

Structure of the professional education program for the activation worker:

• Accredited study, at least secondary level, concluded with a certified state examination, four-year, or advanced
• Comprehensive study covering areas:
• Social work
• Care for the elderly
• Psychiatry
• Psychology
• Health science and palliative care
• Techniques of senior activation
• Pedagogy, andragogy, gerontagogy
• Special pedagogy
• Communication techniques
• Presentation techniques
• PC skills

The research has shown how important the competences of workers in helping professions in social services are. The competences acquired by the worker are perceived as their professionalism, ability to master their profession, their role in the organization with all its professional and ethical contexts. Social dexterity and social intelligence are very significant in social relations in caring professions.

In interpersonal interactions, social dexterity/skills ("social skill" – M. Argyle, 1968) is applied, i.e., the ability to lead and develop a meaningful interaction that is analogous to motor skills in some work or sports activity (Nakonečný, 1997). This is also significant in the context of the significant aging of the population, and this senior population also has its educational needs, but it is also important to educate younger generations about working with seniors, their needs, coexistence between generations, and not to forget that intergenerational coexistence and cooperation has its irreplaceable place in society. In this respect, gerontagogy also has its irreplaceable place.

It is equally important to educate the professional public in the field of gerontagogy and to transfer knowledge from this field into practice. I perceive the importance of transferring this discipline also in the fact that education in its basic functions, i.e., preventive, anticipatory, rehabilitative and strengthening, especially in the last two mentioned functions, is a very important element of senior activation and support of their psychological condition and helps maintain their interests, social contacts and active mind, which significantly affects the quality of life in this period of life.

Educational activities in senior age are important, therefore it is very good to introduce education, or activation of seniors into practice based on gerontagogy. However, the implementation of activities according to clear didactic or methodological procedures is not the most important thing; in this respect, it is essential that activation workers generally know these methods. Therefore, it is important that activation workers master it in some way, at least in the form of didactic principles, even though their original profession is not pedagogy and they do not comprehensively master didactics and methodology.

The activation of seniors includes pedagogical elements, and if it is also implemented using didactics, it is significantly more effective and has a greater impact on the participants of activation (Krystoň, 2011). Therefore, it is important that activation workers, within their professional or further education, are educated in the fields of pedagogy and especially andragogy and gerontagogy.

"In summary, it can be stated that andragogy and gerontagogy work closely together, functionally utilize a large part of the knowledge base (similarly to the knowledge of other sciences or scientific disciplines), are able to effectively apply them to the specific conditions of senior education, all this with extensive and systematic development of scientific production" (Krystoň and Selecký, 2021, p. 38).

However, we must also not forget that the conditions and environment of homes for the elderly must also be adapted to the requirements for the implementation of activities, especially educational ones. "The education of seniors is determined by two types of factors – objective and subjective. Objective factors are both of a societal (micro-societal) nature and specific, determined by a number of factors. Objective factors also include the environment in which the actual educational process takes place and the environment from which the participants in the educational process come" (Špatenková and Smékalová, 2015, p. 75).

Conclusion

The importance of senior activation is the reason for activation workers to be appropriately educated and further (professionally) educated, so that their expert, performance, social and personal competences are at an appropriate professional level.

The job function of the activation worker is a significantly comprehensive work function in the structure of workers in a home for the elderly. The activation worker is the worker who provides a significant part of care in the home for the elderly, which must offer clients of the home literally meaningful spending of their free time and maintenance of abilities to manage self-care activities at the end of life and support mental and physical health (Veteška, 2017). The manner, environment and forms of senior activation create an atmosphere of well-being, positivity and a climate of understanding for clients in the home for the elderly.

Care for the elderly in homes for the elderly is on the border between health and social (direct) care for persons who, due to their age, have some physical, psychological and often social handicaps. Therefore, it is not easy to solve all the personal problems of these persons. In this respect, for the performance of the profession, or in care for the elderly, the competency of workers, built on their formal education and their motivation for performing the profession personally based on perceiving this profession as a vocation or mission, acquires great importance (cf. Malíková, 2011).

It is therefore absolutely necessary that the activation worker, in addition to personal dispositions, is primarily professionally and expertly equipped for their work. The basis for their work is knowledge of direct care services for the elderly, but what should enable them to perform their work with quality is, in addition, expert knowledge of the issues and techniques of senior activation, their support within activation activities and meaningful spending of free time.

The activation of seniors includes a large part of the methodical management of this process based on knowledge of pedagogy, andragogy and gerontagogy, even though many of these activities are of a non-pedagogical character, but contain elements of leading the educational process of adults.

In their work, activation workers daily activate seniors through the offer of leisure time possibilities and stimulate seniors to maintain personal physical and mental activity, therefore they must possess expert knowledge of working with seniors.

It is absolutely necessary, and the activation workers themselves are aware of this in many respects, that they must have the opportunity to obtain professional certified qualification education for this profession.

This is also strongly indicated by the structure of requirements for the competency of the activation worker, arising from their established competency model. It is evident from this that, alongside personal dispositions, a significant part of the requirements concerns expert and professional knowledge and skills, as follows from the above-mentioned research in the area of competency and further education of activation workers.

Author: PhDr. Jiří Vronský Department of Andragogy and Education Management, Faculty of Education, Charles University This text was created within the Cooperatio program (Charles University, Faculty of Education, 2022-2026), research area Education and Pedagogy (GEED).

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Vronský, J. Rozvoj kompetencí pracovníků domovů seniorů. In Veteška, J. (ed.) Vzdělávání dospělých 2019 – v kontextu profesního rozvoje a sociálního kapitálu = Adult Education 2019 – in the context of professional development and social capital : proceedings of the 9th International Adult Education Conference : 11-12 December 2019, Prague. Praha: Česká andragogická společnost, 2020, s. 311–320. ISBN 978-80-906894-8-0. ISSN 2571-3841. ISSN 2571-385X.

Vronský, J. Profesiografie a její praktické využití při řízení lidských zdrojů v organizaci. Praha: Wolters Kluwer, 2012. ISBN 978-80-7357-747 6.