The I-CARE Toolbox
The I-CARE project aims to strengthen the intercultural competences of professionals in the social and health sector and to support them in their work with people from different national, ethnic and social backgrounds. For this purpose, the partners have developed a toolbox with ten learning modules and training materials. These can be delivered as e-learning and also either in a physical or virtual classroom or as blended learning.
The ten modules cover different aspects of intercultural development that staff need to become skilled in, to be able to provide a culturally sensitive service in healthcare settings. Included are also two modules that help trainers to both develop their own materials and gain an understanding of validation.
It is anticipated that each module will take 2 hours and can be accessed as e-learning or delivered face-to-face or in a virtual classroom. The module materials can be downloaded below.
Module Menu
Culture, Diversity & Raising Awareness | Module 1
- Recognise your own cultural background and how this influences your view of the world. Explore cultural differences and similarities and definitions of culture
- The module introduces an understanding of how we can work in diverse teams and provide a good service to people with different cultural backgrounds
Intercultural Communication | Module 2
- This module raises awareness of the cultural differences we might meet when communicating with persons with another cultural background.
- It introduces methods and good practice examples to overcome communication barriers, linguistically and non-verbally, as well as ways to manage inter-cultural conflicts.
Eating, Drinking, Celebrating & Fasting | Module 3
- Learn the basic information about food traditions in different cultures, while raising your awareness about the connections between these traditions and religion.
- The module also covers why increasing your understanding of this is important to be able to provide a culturally sensitive service to those whom you work with.
Ageing, Dying & Death | Module 4
- This module covers the different attitudes to ageing across cultures and the diversity of beliefs about dying and what happens when we die.
- It also covers the importance of the different rites of passage in different cultures and how we can assist those for whom we are caring to make the transitions in a way that suits them and their cultural beliefs.
Body, Gender, Sex & Intimacy | Module 5
- A subject not always openly discussed, this module will take you sensitively through different cultural attitudes to sex and sexuality
- It will give you an understanding of how these views can differ in different cultures and offers you the opportunity to think about how and what you need to do to provide a culturally sensitive service.
Pregnancy, Parenthood, Children & Family Structure | Module 6
- This module develops the skills needed to work with diverse families across cultures. There are different cultural approaches to what a 'family' is and to what 'good parenting' is.
- This module enables you to think about this from different cultural perspectives.
- Aspects of pregnancy, giving birth and the varying approaches to childhood and growing up in diverse family settings are covered.
Disability, Psychology & Mental Problems | Module 7
- This module explores the themes of disability, psychology and mental health problems from an intercultural perspective.
- A special focus has been given to the interrelations between cultural beliefs and attitudes in order to highlight how these concepts are viewed and interpreted by different individuals, socio-cultural groups and cultures.
Dealing With Pain | Module 8
- Pain is very personal, but how we deal with it can be part of our cultural beliefs. This makes understanding how others describe and deal with pain difficult
- This module helps to develop an understanding of the different ways people from diverse cultural backgrounds express and describe pain. It gives you the tools to better assess patients' pain, taking into account cultural backgrounds.
Creating Your Own Learning Material | Module 9
- This module will enable you to design a needs-based training intervention including the development of your own learning material.
- This module introduces a variety of training methods and gives you hints, tips and information on how to produce good quality, learner-centred methods to engage and inspire your learners, including using critical incidents, role-plays and video.
Validation of Intercultural Training | Module 10
- This module explains the main principles of validation and competence-oriented learning as well as the main principles of the validation tool LEVEL 5
- It gives a step-by-step approach of the validation process and importantly how it can be used in an intercultural context.
