DIGNITY  and  HEALTH
Access for all to RIGHTS and SERVICES

TOPICS & BACKGROUND:   let us study the problems - let us analyse the causes
                                                        (major topics for any relations & round tables)

HUMANISTIC : a person exists when they have a place and their voice is heard
      The place, their place, which place within which society ?  Place sometimes occupied by
      silence and violence. 
      'Being-without' housing, work, training, too often leads to 'being without being there'.
      Looking, finding, occupying again one’s place, by getting hold of these places
      Them - the "deprived from..." remind us by their existence that among all the possible
      offers within society, lots of them are not or no more acceptable.

SOCIAL HEALTH & MENTAL HEALTH: mental health is not a priority for Europe.
      At the inter-ministerial conference of Helsinki, January  2005 the alarm bell was set off:
      in Europe  health and mental disease, psychic problems are not sufficiently taken into
      account.
      The symptoms (suicide - alcohol - drug... ) reveal the seriousness of the present situation.
      How can the health system be efficient and take care of the major health and mental health
      problems of the people who ‘survive’  in permanent precarious conditions, without taking
      also into account their social condition?

SERVICE's BENEFICIARIES  express themselves, have exchanges & compare their
      situation:
      *  their place and their active involvement in society,
      *  their direct participation in programming and evaluating the services,
      *  their willingness to get organized and join together so that their voice and the voice
          of the people who have only an abandoned body left to talk, is heard and listened to.

  STUDY - EVALUATION :  monitoring  practices, confrontation between the
       various practices, evaluation of the practices for guaranteeing their positive evolution and
       promoting new experimental practices and –at the same time- for monitoring the present
       trend aiming at ‘bureaucratizing  for monitoring’ – ‘rationalizing for saving money” –
      “publicizing for politicizing” the services to be provided  to the most destitute citizens.

SOCIAL&POLITICAL : "Eradicating poverty and exclusion by 2010 "
      (Lisbon March 2000)
      March 2005 : 68 million European citizens are poor or at risk of poverty Europe – not
      satisfied with the achieved outcome -  reviews the Lisbon strategy by focusing all the
      efforts on economic policy. Watchwords: competitiveness – productivity – consumption.
      Which place for people who are not considered to be competitive, productive, consumer?
      Are social cohesion and solidarity no more considered as being fully part of growth process
      of the social and citizen Europe?

*  *  *  *  *  * 

LET US EVALUATE practices – LET US EXCHANGE experiences
                                                                              (general topics for the workshops )

1. Empowerment: getting hold of one’s dignity, one’s right through recovering the access
    to quality services, at the social as well as health level.

2. Desinstitutionalisation: alternatives to comprehensive Institutionalisation, at the social
    as well as psychiatric level. 

3. Participation - evaluation - control  by the beneficiairies through direct participation
    in the decisions about the programmes, and in the evaluation of the quality and efficiency
    of the services, either directly by the beneficiaries and their families, or indirectly through
    their associations.

4. Chronicity and outreach - at the street, in the institutions (prisons), at home,
    everywhere where chronicity of poverty as well as the sickness discourages from any
    request, exactly when the need is the most complex and urgent.

5. Denied identity – undocumented migrants:  dignity & health without boarders
    Trauma -loss - mourning : so many factors that link them to the people who are “the
    deprived ones….”.
    They have left everything in order to find nothing! A crossing over to hope that ends up
    in wrecking in despair!

NB.: Each of the 5 general topics are discussed during the 3 workshop sessions (Thursday 6 in the afternoon, Friday 7 in the morning and in the afternoon) where various and specific practices are going to be presented about the 5 general  topics: dis-institutionalisation, empowerment, participation, outreach, migration. 

If the topic migration - dignity - health is developed in a parallel symposium, the work topic could become a topic as such.

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