Promote regional social development encouraging NETworking of relevant public-volunteering stakeholders to boost innovation in the delivering social-health-care services for AGEing people

NET-Age project aims at strengthening the sustainable development capabilities of the Adriatic regions and the demographic process focusing on innovative social and health services to favor active ageing and independent living of elderly.Today,governments and civic society are searching for new policies and common answers to face one of the most profound social transformations: the population ageing. Although the structure of age pyramid in the EU Member States(MS) and Candidate Countries (CC)/Potential Candidate Country PCC) varies, this shift is deeply impacting on the social and economic spheres of every Adriatic regions. This continuous increase in life expectancy is a major achievement of the recent past both in MS and CC/PCC. However at the same time it risks putting and additional strain on the economy, society and sustainability of public finance and on the process of institutional and capacity building in CC and PCC. Recognizing this common challenge, NET-Age aims to improve the coordination among public-private (ONG, volunteering) stakeholders to overcome obstacles in the field of elderly assistance, encouraging them to work in partnership at local and Adriatic level and deliver innovative social-health services for ageing people to guarantee active, healthy and independently ageing ;to increase the sustainability of social-health systems maintaining a balance among quality of services-reasonable level of expenditure-equal access;to foster the Open Method of Coordination(OMC) as new approach in the definition and programming of social-health policies; to increase and favor the development of capacities, competences and skills of public institution and of volunteering staff; and finally to enhance the level of awareness and information on the services and policies target to elderly, the role of volunteering in each territory and at Cross Border. In this way, NET-Age actively contributes to strength democratic process and institutional building,reduce territorial inequalities among MS,CC,PCC promoting Adriatic Cross-border networks of stakeholders as stable framework for cooperation, exchange of experience and transfer of competencies strengthening the process of forming Adriatic Ionian Macro Region. Net-Age results reached during pj life will be capitalized after the pj closure:signing the Memorandum of Understanding, all Beneficiaries agree to bring forward projects which valorize and capitalize NET-Age project. The NET-Age activities puts in place the basis of the Adriatic CBC Network where public and volunteering stakeholders from each region work in close collaboration to deliver innovative social-health services to ageing people, steadily exchange experiences and know-how, increase their competencies and skills and in the long term reduce territorial inequalities in the Adriatic area. Starting from the acknowledge of the lack of cooperation among public-private actors, NET-Age overcomes the obstacles to integrate policies in a multidisciplinary approach, around a fundamental networking activities summarized in the JOINT ACTION PLAN-JAP that includes among others: TRAINING SESSION: specific training modules for volunteering associations and for policymakers to support the institutional consolidation and capacity building process. MOBILITY Programme to allow Beneficiaries from PCC and CC to have a direct knowledge of the EU Member States organizations to capitalize their approach, to facilitate the exchange of experience and transfer of competencies. Beneficiaries from each Region implements at local level a series of activities to enhance a truly bottom-up approach, to stimulate the debate on social issues, analyzing the framework of the current social-health policies and implement a PILOT ACTION to concretely test the joint planning and delivering of social-health services to elderly and the application of OMC in the delivering of specific social-health services to elderly.