European elderly care experiences labour shortages, lack of qualified healthcare workers and a major mismatch of capacity and demands in healthcare services. This situation leads to stress and burnout for health care workers, informal caregivers, and leaders, while also impairing mental health and well-being. These challenges affect the resilient performance and quality of healthcare, placing further challenges on the recruitment and workforce retention issues, compromising patient safety, and increasing potential burden for formal and informal caregivers. The increase in life expectancy further amplifies the need for more workers. 

Leaders in elderly care require evidence-based tools, interventions, and training to assess, understand, and address the capacity-demand imbalance. Additionally, leaders must actively involve both health care workers and informal caregivers. Customized interventions are also necessary to enhance the capacity, motivation, and skills of informal caregivers.

The Support4Resilience (S4R) project aims to improve the working conditions, patient safety, and service quality for elderly care workers by supporting leaders in reshaping work conditions and organizational structures. The project’s goal is to develop, implement, and evaluate a research based digital S4R Toolbox that assists managers in promoting resilience and mental well-being among health care workers and informal caregivers in elderly care across Europe. The S4R Toolbox is a web-based platform offering cost-effective individual and collaborative tools to support managerial activities. The central objective is to create a functional system where managers are competent and adaptable to workforce needs and proposals. This will lead to better working conditions, improved mental health, flexible performance, and reduced stress and burnout. It will also build understanding of how to adapt to changes, adverse events, and innovate under increasingly demanding circumstances.