Given the ongoing epidemiological changes and the persistent shortage of healthcare staff, informal caregivers will be called on to increase their involvement in the care of people with special needs. So that they do not become exhausted, these caregivers need to be given extra support.

To achieve this goal, an innovative programme entitled Informal Caregivers: a Service by students (or PAuSES in French ) will be developed, trialled and evaluated in three Schools of Health Sciences of HES-SO University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland.

It aims to enable students to offer services to informal caregivers as part of their training. The programme will comprise three steps:

• identification of the components of the programme with partners;
• development of the programme;
• a feasibility study. 

At the end of the project, PAuSES will make students more efficient and give them a better understanding of informal caregivers’ situations. For their part, informal caregivers should be able to achieve a healthier occupational balance.