LABCare

Amid global concerns about increasingly ageing societies, there is today an urgent need to attract and retain qualified elderly care staff. The elderly care sector faces worldwide challenges with recruitment, retention, and upskilling, but these challenges are further complicated in Norway and Denmark by a range of regionally-specific factors, including demographic shifts, professional regulations, and norms that introduce unique demands on healthcare students and licensed practical nurses. LABCare will respond to these challenges by exploring how we may improve the conditions for learning in the elderly care field by facilitating collaboration between vocational education and municipal employers. LABCare consists of an interdisciplinary, comparative study that traverses demographic and national boundaries. The key sites of investigation are the learning environments in and across vocational education and elderly care workplaces. The research project consists of document studies, fieldwork and interviews in six larger city municipalities and smaller district municipalities across three regions in Norway and Denmark, and includes studies of what characterizes both the research and the policy area within vocational education and learning in working life in the two countries. The various studies will together provide knowledge about the conditions for learning and the learning environment within elderly care, useful in further development work, both strategic, organizational and practical, to ensure a competent and qualified workforce within elderly care.