IT Carlow has received 1m in funding to develop education for family carer's in the region.
They were granted the funding after they submitted a case study highlighting the Certificate in Family Caring course that they ran during the pandemic.
162 carers took part in the course which was a first experience of higher education for 94% of them.
The course is delivered flexibly with a number of online and in person modules.
Vice president for academic affairs, David Denieffe says the aim was to try and help carer's in their role.
"We provided a course for people who are family carers to help them in handling that role better cause it's so challenging and it's so hard. So we were trying to support them in that role and 162 carers in total did that course.
The HEA liked it so much that out of 21 submitted case studies, 5 were picked and we received one million as part of that."
He also outlined how IT Carlow plan to use the funding.
"What we're hoping to do is to be able to take that one million euro and use it to further develop carer education and support and we're working with Family Carers Ireland on that one.
This will offer opportunity for a whole cohort of people who just can't go to higher education due to the caring responsibilities they have and we hope that we can do a bit more for them."
