Project   'DIGNITY   and   WELL-BEING'
            Exchange for changing  

Cooperation for Innovation and the Exchange of Good Practices
Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training  
(application 2016 KA2)


A. General Information

This application form consists of the following main sections:

-        Context: this section asks for general information about the type of project proposal you want to submit;

-        Participating organisation(s): this section asks for information about the applicant organisation and about other
         participating organisations involved as partners in the project;

-        Description of the project: this section asks for information about the stages of the project which should include:
         preparation, implementation and follow-up;

-        Project Summary: In this section you should describe in a compact way your project's rational, objectives and how
          you intend to  achieve these.


B. Context

-        Project Title :                    DIGNITY & WELL-BEING : Exchange for changing

-        Project Start Date :           14-11-2016

-        Project Total Duration :    31 months

-        Project End Date :            13-06-2019

-        Applicant Organisation :  Centro Hospitalar Psiquiátrico de Lisboa

 

C. Priorities

The priorities were selected based on the following:

§  It will be developed a training curriculum to ensure the grounding of professionals working in the social area and of mental health to understand and respond appropriately to the needs of homeless people with mental illness, giving attention to refugees and migrants in these conditions.
This training curriculum will be constructed based on a context for learning from experience putting together professionals from different countries and backgrounds that work directly and actively with the homeless and refugees mentally ill.

§  The training curriculum will be spread by all institutions working in the field and that provide training to social workers. In Portugal, this training curriculum will be presented to the national public bodies responsible for the definition and implementation of social and mental health politics.
These institutions should distinguish the proposed curriculum as a model to financing programs aimed at the lifelong training of professionals working with people with mental illness, aligned with the priorities for the sector stated in Portugal 2020

§  Through the exchanges of knowledge and the analysis of experiences, in relationship to these extreme precariousness situations with no appearing positive solution, we intend to highlight effective and innovative alternatives in the approach, support and integration of these suffering persons.

§  Through the analysis of the situation and conditions of life of some of these roofless people, in conditions of extreme deprivation and degradation, we would like to listen their voices and understand their help request, in order to improve adequate, effective, coherent and comprehensive answers, ensuring for each person dignity and well-being, promoting and facilitating the access to fundamental rights and to basic citizen services.

 

E. Description of the Project

Homelessness is a complex phenomena that results from the co-ocurrence of diverse vulnerabilities.
As is recognized by the European Mental Health Action Plan (2013), "most mental disorders are much more prevalent among those who are most deprived" and one of its proposed actions is "to offer special outreach programmes in areas with a high prevalence of risk populations such as poor minority groups or homeless people".

Outreach work with a focus on the homeless severelly mentally ill is the most provocative and challenging to professionals. Often they encounter persons living in severe physical, psychical and social precariousness but that seem to prefer to live in the streets and to refuse any planned institutional help. They also impose difficult dillemas like when to activate involuntary treatment or not in order to respect personal will.

The refugee phenomena overlaps with the homeless one in several ways. Often we find severe homeless situations in persons who are migrant and refugees, adding more complexity to the situations. Both situations put a great burden on the mental health of the individuals and often they seek help in the same services and professionals.

Professionals working with these kind of situations face a great burden and risk of burn out, and also feel a great need to clarify ideas about what are the best ways to adress the needs of the homeless and refugees mentally ill. At the same time there are no easy and clear guidelines on what to do, due to the complexities of the individual situations and also to the diversity of resources and contexts among different countries and cities. Hence the absolute need that professionals with experience in this area, both from the social and health sectors, as well as from public and private organizations get together and "cooperate for innovation and the exchange of good practices".

Since many of the innovative solutions for this high risk population are born locally, out of individual creativity within particular contexts, it is essential that such a project is transnational, in order to share what kind of practices are being implemented and considered efective among different countries.
These practices tend to be ignored by the professionals working in isolation in each country and in order to be efectively understood professionals must have the chance to visit and discuss with each other.


G.  The project aims at:

1.      creating a strategic parnership for vocational education and training of professionals working with homeless and refugees with a special focus on the most deprived and severely mentally ill. It will try to identify pathways that improve professionals abilities to listen and understand their voice and needs, and also to design and propose more adequate answers that increase their physical and psychical wellbeing as well as their dignity and acess to rights.

2.       promoting improvements in terms of quality, innovation and excellence in the training of professional workers in social and mental health field, specitally for those working with homeless and refugees with mental illness.

To accomplish these two general objectives, the projects intends to build an international network of professionals working with homeless in different kinds of organizations and countries, to promote workshops based on the presentation and discussions of cases studies,in order to identify and learn new and inovative solutions and, at the same time, to produce a training curriculum and trainning tools that can be shared and spread among other professionals in each country.

In what way is the project innovative and/or complementary to other projects already carried out?

Altough there are forums to think about homelessness and refugees that gather reseachers and academics, or else people working on a decision level, it is rare to find a forum where professionals working from a clinical and proximity level can exchange ideas and practices. Besides it is also very rare to join together professionals from the health and social sectors, traditionally working isolated from each other.
One might add that among the homeless and refugees the most severelly mentally ill can be the most overlooked and forgotten, because of a trend to design solutions for the more autonomous and healthier.

This project tries to overcome these imbalances by bringing together social and health professionals working on a daily basis with the most difficult and challenging cases that don't fit the usual institutional interventions. It will try to establish a context for learning how to better listen and understand the individual needs of the homelless and refugees mentally ill, and how to create a better match between the organizational answers and those needs.

We also think it is innovative to build knowledge from peer discussion of real hard cases in specific contexts, adding to it the anaysis and metodological expertise of persons linked to research and university teaching. In the end, the products of this project will be beneficial to many professionals that enter this field without the proper preparation to work with such complex cases, also to technicians and politicians working at a decision level that frequently are not aware of the hardship and the challenges of the intervention with this population. Obviously, we hope in the end to benefit the the most deprived among the homeless and refugees by way of improving the professionals skills of those who work for them. \

The organizations partners choised manage in their countries street outreach projects focused on the homeless and to the delivery of services to the mentally ill. As the refugees problem increases these organizations have been faced with the need to develop anwers to their needs.
Thus, the organizations involved in the project have a long experience on the problem of homelessness and more recently the refugees. They have different approaches to it. Some of them manage services and host communities aimed to mentally ill people and have participated on the process of normalization of mental illness. Sharing different methodology and different ways to approach is one of the points of force of the project. Training based on a metodology that relies on the exhange of practices and discussion of real hard cases is the way chosen to improve skills and to build a trainning curricula and tools that can be shared with other professionals.

The homelessness phenomena is a composed problem full of complexity and obstacles that often put together social disadvantage and psychiatric distress. The refugees phenomena are a relatively new problem that challenges our organizations and professionals in multiple ways. Every organization in its country, due to its work experience, has built a different way to approach them, different tools and different strategy to accompany homeless and refugee people in their road to the social inclusion. Often the organizations find, in their daily work, homeless people in a deep condition of exclusion and marginality; they have often psychiatric distress and refuse every kind of help.
This common experience brought us to elaborate this project to build knowledge from the different experiences and to share together new strategies to help these persons and the professionals that work with them.

The cooperation will be implemented through a virtual platform. The first visit consists in the project launching and will be the opportunity to agree about our more detailed planning and communication techniques.
Commitment and involvement of every partner will guarantee regular written, spoken and live communication.

The Psychiatric Hospital Center of Lisbon will insure the good communication between the institutions through the creation of a mailing group and a facebook account to exchange and share information, documentation and reports, available to the partners.

The Associations Partners will contribute to the contents and the general reflections with relevant information and testimonies, in order to improve the knowledge and comprehension of the respective situation and social work approach.
The partners are in charge of the global production dissemination to the appropriate media for the good use of other actors.

The most relevant topics addressed by the project are :

o   Health and wellbeing

o   Inclusion – equity

o   New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

The results expected during the project and on its completion are :

o   Elaboration of profiles of homeless mentally ill in different cities and countries of Europe

o   Attention will be given to those homeless with a migrant and refugees history

o   Identification of common as well as specific difficulties in the work with homeless mentally ill

o   Analysis and explicitation of the factors/causes of the homelessness situation;

o   Sharing of practices and metodologies;

o   Presentation of alternative and innovative interventions, with more probability of success;

o   A publication out of the reflexive work on the profiles and their discussion in the workshops that will try to establish guidelines for good practice with this population

o   Elaboration of a trainning curriculum to better prepare professionals to understand and intervene with this population

o   The building of tools like a trainning book and DVD that can be used in the trainning of other
professionals

o   A document that will serve to present at national and european political level the conclusions and the guidelines established in this  process.

 

Participants


Each workshop will gather a group of up to 32 people.
From those 16 will be partners participants, the rest (16) will be local professionals for whom a specific grant is not forseen.

There will be 4 workshops.

Two Seminars planned, one at the start and another at the end of the project.
Each seminar will be open to a wider audience of professionals and scholars interested in the subject (around 200 estimated persons).

The intelectual outputs of the project will be availabe to an indefinite number of persons impossible to estimate, as they will be divulgated by several mediums, including the web.


Preparation

During the design of the project's proposal we already have had web meetings by skype with the partner organizations to discuss about the project theme, objectives and expected results. We worked together in the writing of the project using Skype and mailcommunications.

Before the project activities start we will improve the network of the project. We will work on the methodology of focus groups we're going to realize during the project, as well as on the dissemination plan, the reporting documents, the evaluation plan and the monitoring system.

Then we will conclude contracting arrangements and get the partnership agreement signed by all participating organization. This agreement will include financial, technical and legal aspects related to the Implementation of the project, including: pare partners role and responsibilities, budget matters, remuneration policy for staff, reimbursement modalities for travels and costs of stay;

CHPL will prepare all the tools and templates for each step of the project management to be used for all partners, including a budget plan for each of them and the instructions of how partners should report costs and administrative issues to the promoter.
Each partner will allocate the resources needed to accomplish their tasks (people, equipment, information, and so on).  The coordinator will prepare the list of partners with the contact persons for the technical and financial parts. All partners will inform local, national and European stakeholders about the inception of the project through a brief presentation of it. CHPL will prepare a plan to manage the risks in the project that will be validated by all partners in the kickoff meeting.

SMES will do all the arrangements for the Kickoff meeting in Brussels, supported by CHPL (meeting room and the necessary equipment, suggestion of Hotels and places to eat to help foreigner partners, agenda, and so on)

Before each visit, we will work with the host organization and the participant partners, users and professionals, to prepare the exchange of practices: goals to reach, list of issues to explore, elaboration of case profiles, observation and evaluation grids, role distribution if needed, etc.


Project Management

The proper budget will be ensured and controlled by a dedicated administrative team of CHPL with experience in the management of public hospital funds.

CHPL will be in touch with each partner responsible for the preparation of the transnational partner meetings and workshops to be certain that they are taking the right arrangements to accomplish those as scheduled.

The monitoring and evaluation of the quality of the project's activities and results will be done by SMES and PARC SANITARI SANT JOAN DE DEU, following a quality assurance and evaluation plan established by both at the beggining of the project.
This internal evaluation process will be supported by a systematic application of empirical methods aiming at assess and improve the planning, implementation and impact of the project.

An evaluation of the fruitfulness of the workshops in order to build a consensus of pratices and trainning curriculum will be asked  from each participant right after each meeting. A participatory model where all the partners have the chance to evaluate and contribute in all phases of the project will be used.

At the same time efforts will be made to involve professionals with experience in qualitative research methods in order to monitor and evaluate the methodology used in the workshops. This network of partners have connections with researchers from the Global Mental Health Institute (Lisbon) and University Complutensis (Madrid) that can be part of the evaluation system even if they are not formal partners of the project.

Monitoring on the progress of the activities will be arranged through reports shared between the work teams in each transnational meeting, at the end of each year and at the end of the project.
SMES will supervise and coordinate the progress of the intelectual outputs of the project training curriculum and the guide withgood practices).
PARC SANITARI SANT JOAN DE DEU will involve a very competent team with consolidated experience in European projects, including the conduction of internal evaluation processes.

The case profiles elaboration and discussion will count with workers with experience with social and mental problems, as well as homeless, migrants and refugees.


The major risks involved in the cooperation between the partner organizations are influenced by several factors: economic criticalities in a difficult economic historical moment; bureaucratic and administrative procedures as well as daily activities that can be obstacles to the respect of the project timing; fragmentation of the network due to normative, burocratic and legislative differences between partner organization's country.

Favourable factors are the previous experience and the reciprocal acquaintance of different partners, the connection that exists thanks to SMES activity and participation in European projects, all facilitate the capacity to discuss and find answers to the most complex problems that partner organizations find in their daily work.

The strategy for risk mitigation is founded on the involvement and motivation of each project's participant, on participatory decisional processes, on the fine-tuning of a system of effective and widespread evaluation.
-    We'll try to use all the web opportunities (skype, mailing list, a sort of newsletter of the project, social
     networks) to improve the network , to decrease the network fragmentation and to pass over the
     economic's difficulties.
-   We'll try to find evidence for good practices and to build trainning tools starting from the common base
     between the partners' organizations.
-    We'll try to find specific answers to the different needs linked to normative, burocratic and legislative
     differences.

In the project we will try to identify all risks from the beginning, on an individual basis and its possible impacts on project objectives (in terms of scope, time, quality and cost). A risk management matrix will be used to plan and manage identified risks. This will be reviewed and updated on a regular basis.

Activities and indicators of achievement (quantitative and qualitative) that will put in place in order to assess whether and to what extent, the project reaches its objectives and results :
-   Evaluation system
-   Tasks's assignment based on the experiences and the competences of the organizations involved in the
     project
-   Skype meetings to verify the respect of timing of the project and the respect of deadlines defined
-   Planning of project actions inside every partner organizations
-   Presentation meeting inside every partner organizations to involve all the staff of the organizations and
    to motivate them to the  main project's objectives

Quantities indicators:

-   N. of profiles of homeless people collected

-   N. of focus group realized

-   N. of analysis of profiles realized inside the focus group

-   N. of solutions to the complexity present inside each profile

-   N. of participants at the focus groups

-   N. of participants of the dissemination seminaries

-   N. of people involved in the project

Qualitative indicators:

-   Focus groups reports

-   Respect of the project timing

-   Number of documents realized inside the focus groups

-   Number of evaluation reports

-   Evaluation reports

-   Project's modifications after evaluation activities

-   Shared methodologies

-   Trainning tools created

-   Level of envolvement of the professionals participating in the project

 

G. Implementation

Please elaborate on the methodology you intend to apply in your project. Please also provide detailed information about the project activities that you will carry out with the support of the grant requested under the item "Project Management and Implementation".

The project will use a methodology based on intervision by peers in workshops with relatively small groups of experienced professionals.

At the local level, each participant will be asked to prepare case profiles, together with his or her local team. These case profiles will be focused on situations of homelessness and/or refugees with severe mental health problems, and also on the challenges and specificities of the intervention.

At the transnational level, through a program of visits and workshops, all the participants will present the case profiles, and will try to evaluate the similarity and differences of the identified needs and interventions. They will also analyze the adequacy and effectiveness of the interventions, trying to identify innovative and effective practices or not so adequate practices.

During the project it will be possible to visit the partner organizations to see how they work, their methodology and to share their knowledge of the phenomenon. It will be organized visits in each workshop and it will be given a training perspective to the visits.

These workshops will be very useful to understand what is common and what is different and more specific, not only to each case but also to each context, for example, those that result from different legislations and services offered in each country in Europe.

Four workshops will be made in different countries in order to insure a wide range of experiences. The organization of these Shortterm joint staff training events will be managed by CHPL with the colaboration of the host organization.

A training curriculum will be constructed based on this context for learning from experience putting together professionals from different countries and backgrounds that work directly and actively with the homeless and refugees mentally ill.

TThe results of the workshops, the profiles and the action strategy identified will be organized in a good practices manual that will become a job tool for the social workers and one of the most important tool to disseminate the project's results.

During the project there will be several moments to collect and analyse information in order to monitor and assess the quality of the activities of the project, following the quality assurance and evaluation plan.

Finally the project will use and disseminate what was learned to better prepare professionals working with this population. It will establish standards of good practices, and build a training curriculum and training tools. It also aims at producing a document that can be presented at the national and European political level. An International Conference will give the opportunity to present the outcomes of the project and to discuss the topics identified in the workshops to a wider forum, with more participants and experts.

These materials will be first prepared in English and then translated by each partner to their national language.

The host partner for each workshop and transnational partner meeting will be responsible for making all the logistic and administrative arrangements for those events to happen with quality and efficiency.

Please provide detailed information about the activities that your project will organise and elaborate on the methods you intend to use.

Around November 2016 – Brussels - Kick off meeting -first meeting with the steering committee of the project, with the participation of all the partners in order to define the timing of the activities, communication tools and consultants we would like to involve and  other administrative arrangements.

This meeting will involve16 participants (2 per partner) and will have the duration of two days.

From December 2016 to March 2017

-   Collection of the first tranche of profiles of homeless people
-   During this phase all the organizations involved in the project will collect three different profiles of the
     people they met in their job. The profiles will have to be a sort of dynamic image of the process that
     brought the person in the condition of deep social exclusion included the actions  realized to help
     him/her and the actors from the public services and from the private services involved

Around March 2017 – Lisbon: a first workshop of the project is to be held in Lisbon. This first workshop with professionals presenting and discussing case profiles will try to focus on the physical and mental health care issues. Visits of hospitals and institutions will be programmed for exchange and evaluation of practices.

This workshop will have the duration of five days, and will involve 16 partner participants + 16 local professionals and experts.. The workshop will not have more than 32 professionals on the total.

Around October 2017 –  Dublin : a second workshop with professionals will be held. This workshop will try to focus on emergency and social interventions. Again, visits to institutions will be programmed, and discussion of real cases will happen to evaluate and exchange practices.

This workshop will have the duration of five days, and will involve 16 partner participants with some more local professionals, until 32 persons.

Around February  2018 – Florence: a meeting with the steering committee and consultants from academia will be held in order to evaluate the workshops executed so far, and to start to systematize what was learned to build a curriculum and training tools useful to professionals.

This meeting will have the duration of three days and will involve 14 partner participants plus two invited consultants.

From January 2018 to March 2018 - Collection of the second tranche of profiles of homeless people - During this phase all the organizations involved in the project will collect three different profiles of the people they met in their job. The preparation of these profiles should follow the same procedures as the first ones.

Around Mai 2018 – Athens: a third workshop is to be held with a focus on the housing solutions for this population. Again, visits and case profile discussions will help to identify the most important issues in this area.

This workshop will have the duration of five days, and will involve 16 partner participants with some more local professionals, until 32 persons.

Around September 2018, Barcelona - a fourth workshop is to be held, with the same methodology, this time with a focus on rehabilitation and resocialization interventions.

This workshop will have the duration of five days, and will involve 16 partner participants with some more local professionals, until 32 persons.

From September 2018 to March 2019 - Good practices manual: The results of the workshops, the profiles and the action strategy identified will be organized in a good practices manual that will become a job tool for the social workers and one of the most important tool to disseminate the project's results.

From September 2018 to March 2019 - Training curriculum: Preparation of a training curriculum based on topics developed in each workshop, specific needs of professionals and results of evaluations conducted along the project life spam.

Around March 2019 – Brussels a final transnational meeting with the steering committee and partners to conclude the preparation of the training curriculum and manual of good practices. This meeting will serve to conclude a document to be presented at national and European political level with recommendations.

One day will be dedicated to hearing in European Parliament and meeting with Commissioner of Employment and Social affairs.

This meeting will have the duration of three days and will involve 16 partner participants plus two invited consultants.

Around May 2019 – Warsow, a Final Conference/international Seminar will present the intelletual outputs conclusions and the most relevant knowledge built during the process to a wider audience of professionals and experts in order to gather their feedback.


G.1. Intellectual Outputs

Output Title Training Curriculum: Providing Dignity and Wellbeing to homeless people with mental illness

Output Description : A training program aimed at the grounding of professionals working in the social area and of mental health to understand and respond appropriately to the needs of homeless people with mental illness, with attention to refugees and migrants in these conditions.  With :
-   description of the tasks leading to the production of the intellectual output and the applied ethodology
-   Identify specific needs of the professionals working in the ground
-   Define the learning objetives
-   Select the topics to develop
-   Construct the modules
-   Validation by experts in the area

Start Date (dd-mm-yyyy) 02-02-2017

End Date (dd-mm-yyyy) 01-03-2019

Output Identification O2

Output Title Good practices manual for working with the homeless with mental illness

Output Description A very useful tool to share the results of the workshops, the profiles and the action strategy identified for the social workers working with homeless and refugees with mental illness and one of the most important tool to disseminate the project's results.

This are  the tasks leading to the production of the intellectual output and the applied methodology

1.      Collect of Photos : this collection will be the result of photos received by each visited centres, with adequate captions

2.      Collect of Interviews : of participants, of experts, of political people and administrators, of people on the streets Organised by local visited centres but also by coordinator (or similar) of project. It’s important to have panoramic vision of situation.

3.      Profile of visited centres : following a common protocol similar to profile for individual people, that will be prepared by steering commeettee for ex.:
   3.1. Description of context of each centre…
   3.2. In what way they offer answer to health/mental health and social needs…;
   3.3. In what way they conytribute to the co-working with other 4th sectors : health – social assistance – housing – reintegration …

4.      What are the most important difficulties in front of workers, beneficiars, public or privat sector, citizens….

5.      Absolute priorities and recommendations


Start Date (dd-mm-yyyy) 31-03-2017

End Date (dd-mm-yyyy) 01-03-2019


H. Follow-up

H.1. Impact

What is the expected impact on the participants, participating organisations, target groups and other relevant stakeholders?

The project will be an item on the curriculum of each organisation and it will be incorporated in the learning activities of all project members. All appropriate learners will receive information about the project, its objectives and opportunities during their induction, on-going training, etc as appropriate at the start of the project. This will include language and cultural preparation. All learners will draw up an Individual Learning Plan, which will identify their individual aims and the expected benefits of the visit for them as well as identifying the relevance of the visit to their curriculum and future training or employment. On the return from their visit, each learner will contribute to the Visit Report and be supported to evaluate the visit against their Individual Learning Plan.

The impact we expect on the partecipant is mainly the improving of the resources to approach the condition of deep social exclusion. Building new tools and new way to solve the difficulties and the complexity linked with the homeless condition it will become a new way to work for the social and sanitary workers employed in the organizations involved in the project.

All partners undertake to include the project as an on-going item at all relevant meetings involving staff at their organisation. We anticipate that visits may introduce partners to new ways of thinking about, delivering and managing education and training and it is anticipated that visits will have an immediate effect on some partners, who will be able to adapt good practice that they see in other partners. Based on the better understanding of other partners', their cultures and methodologies we will involve relevant new elements into our respective methodologies and modify or update our respective organisational curriculums and practices.

The desired impact of the project at the local, regional, national, European and/or international levels :

We envisage that this project will have an impact within each partner organisation, each region or country that the partners operate in and throughout the EU via the identification and analysis of the differences and similarities that leads to the recognition of common models, protocols, guidelines, structures, mechanisms, policies, processes, etc relating to good practice in the training of adults as trainers.

We expect the following specific impacts:

1. Learners (ie: social and health workers employed in the organizsations involved in the project) to better develop their individual skills and competences, which will help them to improve their capacity to effectively approach groups and individuals in the various marginalised, isolated and vulnerable communities that partner organisations engage with

2. Partner organisations to have identified models of good practices in the contact, support and help of homeless people and psychiatric distress people and this information to be disseminated within each partner organisation, other organisations workingwith the same or similar target groups in the partner organisation's country

3. Partner organisations to identify models of good practices in the monitoring and evaluation of training learning by doing programme; this information will be disseminated within each partner organisation, other organisations delivering education to the same or similar communities in each country and the wider lifelong learning community across Europe

4. Improvements in the delivery of training to our learners (ie: our trainers) by our staff
We expect to gaining, at the end of the project, the opportunity to show and share the results and the guidelines elaborated with regional, national and european institutions to discuss and propose new politics and new intervention strategy on the homeless question.

At regional level we expect the opportunity to open discussion tables focused on the homeless question with other organizations working on our same field and with the institutions.

At European level there will be recommended some priorities in social & health policy through a document presented to the Commissioner of Employment and Social affairs.

How will you measure the previously mentioned impacts?

We will measure the impact expected on the partecipant through the analysis of the diffusion and the utilization of the tools built during the project and of the good practices evidenced.

The organization of meetings in regions to bring as many actors together . The number of participants of this event can show as an indicator of how much the theme of the project will be disseminated. In addition, the number of press articles, the visitors of websites and the frequenting of relevant forums of social media more meaningful indicators that provide information on the effectiveness of the project and its activities .

We will measure the impact expected at regional level through the number of tables to discuss and share the project's results realized.

Istitutional level

We will measure the impact on the institutions through the number of public meetings will be organized and the opportunities we will realize to discuss and share the project's results in the istitutional seats.

Another indicator will be contacts resulting from the project work and people and institutions have achieved in other parts of Europe.

H.2. Dissemination and Use of Projects' Results

You are requested to make plans for the dissemination of your project results. Please provide answers to the questions below.

To whom will you disseminate the project results inside and outside your organisation? Please define in particular your target audience(s) at local/regional/national/EU level and motivate your choice.

The target groups of the dissemination are various:

1) Social and health workers employed in the partner organizations

2) social and health workers employed in organizations not involved in the project

3) regional institutions

4) national institutions

5) european institutions


Each partner country will have to perform the following tasks:

-        Monitor the evolution of the phenomenon, comparing the target group's interventions and policies relating to homelessness and refugees phenomenon (programs implemented by national governments and other initiatives linked to social policies, deviance urban sprawl, urban poverty , etc ...);

-        Disseminate the results of the project in local contexts reaching out the community of professionals and promoting the trainning tools developed under the project

-        Promote further contacts and cooperation among the actors involved in the field, as well as promote a greater sense of responsibility.

In detail the activities to be implemented under the action of dissemination will be:

-        creation of a database of useful contacts (stakeholders);

-        realization of direct contacts (telephone calls, mailings) with key actors (stakeholders, policy makers) in order to present and

-        promote the project;

-        Involvement of these figures in the project activities (such as seminaries, meetings, workshops);

-        desirable involvement of national and international organizations in the EU countries interested in the subject;

-        advertising products and outcomes of the project in other contexts / relevant events that could be linked to the homelesness and refugees phenomena, with particular attention to strategies of intervention in favor of the target groups;

The organization responsible of the dissemination activities will be SMES Europe. This is because SMES Europe is an international network connected with nationals and europeans institutions and because of its long experience in building and in maintaining an international network through the realization of public meetings, seminaries, and similar.

Every partner will be responsabile for the dissemination process in their own country, sharing with other organizations the products and tools generated by the project

The applicant organization will be responsibile for the process management and to verify the timing of activities insuring the respectof deadlines.

The project aims at the dissemination of actions and tools that will raise the awareness of the complexity of homeless and refugee conditions and preprare the professionals to give adequate responses to their needs. The dissemination of the project will become, therefore, an opportunity to disseminate values and information on the approach to these complex problems. The individualpartners and the network itself will be vehicles to spread information and trainning tools that will help professionals in their efforts to fight social exclusion.

Information about the project will be disseminated in a careful way through the website of the project and of each of the partners, giving attention to the various stages and actions of the project.

The dissemination of different materials (paper and digital) Profile form, Manual, Guidelines and the training curriculum represent a range of possibilities of diffusion of the overall project design. These products and all information will be disseminated in the different languages of the partners.

The process of training of professionals, from the social and health fields, will allow the sharing and dissemination of the products of the project, in the form of teaching materials and trainning tools.

The final conference will be essential to disseminate the outcomes of the project among a wider audience.

At the end, partners will be explicitly required to make available the design of the project and its products to a broader public in ways compatible with their activities institutional activities and on the web.

Erasmus+ has an open access requirement for all materials developed through its projects. If your project is producing intellectual outputs/ tangible deliverables, please describe how you intend to ensure free access for the public to a digital form of this material. If  you intend to put any limitation on the use of the open licence, please specify the reasons, extent and nature of this limitation.

The results and the productions of the project will be shared through the web site and other social networks like facebook. The publications and the seminaries acts will be able to be requested by the website. We will send the results and the good practices manual also by mail at the mailing list of every organizations involved in the project.

To ensure that the project's results will remain available and will be used by others.

The project's results will remain accessible on the website that will become a tool (also after the end of the project) to maintain opened the contact between organizations involved in the project. The tools built during the project and collected in the good practices manual will be used during the daily work of the organizations involved in the project in a synergic way of collaboration with the organizations not involved in this project. Social work is based on network and every action is realized by various actors, so, using the results of the project in our daily work will be a way of sharing them with our daily partners.

If relevant, please provide any other information you consider appropriate to give a full understanding of your dissemination plan and its expected impact (e.g. how you have identified which results are most relevant to disseminate; how you will ensure the involvement of all partners; how you see synergies with other stakeholders, etc.)

The dissemination activity it will be composed by:

1) The realization of specific media of diffusion, such as the integrate research report, which will be prepared in English, and the realization of a abstack research abstract in the original language for each of the participating countries, to ensure a widespread diffusion

2) The adoption of web tools linked to existent sites of the partners

3) the realization of three exchange seminaries

4) the organization in every country involved in the project of discussion table or public events


H.3. Sustainability

What are the activities and results that will be maintained after the end of the EU funding, and how will you ensure the resources needed to sustain them?

The main objective of this project is the building of new tools to approach the trainning of professionals working with deep conditions of social exclusion. These tools will remain within the work culture of the organizations involved and will become a new way to implement strategic actions aiming at thebuilding of social inclusion programs.

Once these trainning tools are avaliable in the community of professionals they can be used, replicated or adapted to new forms in unpredictely ways, reaching an indefinite number of people.

The network of this project will also become a space where the organizations will be able to share its difficulties and its obtained results.This doesn't need additional resources.

It would be good if it is possible to organize an annual meeting between the organizations involved in the project to maintain a strong network strictly connected. To reach this aim we need additional resources to pay the cost of the mobility.

We assume that the local partners also avail themselves of the resources available from government and politics, to disseminate the project results and the continuous measures and integrate them into their own work processes.

 

J. Project Summary

Please provide a short summary of your project. Please recall that this section [or part of it] may be used by the European  Commission, Executive Agency or National Agencies in their publications. It will also feed the Erasmus+ dissemination platform.

Be concise and clear and mention at least the following elements: context/background of project; objectives of your project; number and profile of participants; description of activities; methodology to be used in carrying out the project; a short description of the results and impact envisaged and finally the potential longer term benefits.

In view of further publication on the Erasmus+ dissemination platform, please also be aware that a comprehensive public summary of project results will be requested at report stage(s). Final payment provisions in the contract will be linked to the availability of such

summary.

The project "Dignity & Well Being: exchange for changing" aims at creating a strategic partnership for vocational education and training of professionals working with homeless and refugees with a special focus on the most deprived and severely mentally ill. It will try to identify pathways that improve professionals abilities to listen and understand their voice and needs, and also to design and propose more adequate answers that increase their physical and psychical wellbeing as well as their dignity and acess to rights.

It also aims at promoting improvements in terms of quality, innovation and excellence in the training of professional workers in social and mental health field, specitally for those working with homeless and refugees with mental illness.

To accomplish these two general objectives, the projects intends to build an international network of professionals working with homeless in different kinds of organizations and countries, to promote workshops based on the presentation and discussions of cases studies,in order to identify and learn new and inovative solutions and, at the same time, to produce a training curriculum and trainning tools that can be shared and spread among other professionals in each country.

The project network includes eight organizations that have a long experience on the deliverly of services to the mentally ill and the most social excluded, combining organizations from both the public and private, as well as the health and social sectors.

It will use a methodology based on intervision by peers in workshops with relatively small groups of experienced professionals.

Through a program of visits and workshops, all the participants will present case profiles, focused on situations of homelessness and/or refugees with severe mental health problems, and will try to evaluate similarities and differences in the difficulties and interventions. During the project it will be possible to visit the partner organizations, to see how they work, their methodology and to share their knowledge of the phenomenon. Four workshops will be made in different countries in order to insure a wide range of experiences and a special focus in each one: physical and mental care issues, emergency and social interventions, housing solutions and rehabilitation and resocialization interventions.

After the four workshops, an international seminar and conclusive conference will give the opportunity to discuss the topics identified in the workshops to a wider forum, with more participants and experts.

Finally, the project will use and disseminate what was learned to better prepare professionals working with this population. It will build a training curriculum and training tools on how to better provide dignity and wellbeing to homeless with mental health ilness, it will produce a good practices manual and also will try to establish clear recommendations that can be presented at the national and european political level.

We expect that these project results will enrich and help the community of professionals who often find no clear guidelines in their daily work. We also expect them to be helpful to those who work on a decisional level and have to plan and make political options.

Ultimately, we expect that those for whom the professional community works for will be the main beneficiaries.

PROJECT SUMMARY :


The project aims at creating a strategic partnership for vocational education and training of professionals working with homeless and refugees with a special focus on the most deprived and severely mentally ill.

It will try to identify pathways that improve professionals abilities to listen and understand their voice and needs, and also to design and propose more adequate answers that increase their physical and psychical wellbeing as well as their dignity and access to rights.

The projects intends to build an international network of professionals working with homeless and refugees with mental health problems in different kinds of organizations and countries, to promote workshops based on the presentation and discussions of cases studies, in order to identify difficulties and good practices, and also aims at producing in the end training tools that can be shared and spread among other professionals in each country.

 

Follow-up :  IMPACT

 

--> What is the expected impact on the participants, participating organisations, target groups and other relevant stakeholders?

The project will be an item on the curriculum of each organisation and it will be incorporated in the learning activities of all project members. All appropriate learners will receive information about the project, its objectives and opportunities during their induction, on-going training, etc as appropriate at the start of the project. This will include language and cultural preparation. All learners will draw up an Individual Learning Plan, which will identify their individual aims and the expected benefits of the visit for them as well as identifying the relevance of the visit to their curriculum and future training or employment. On the return from their visit, each learner will contribute to the Visit Report and be supported to evaluate the visit against their Individual Learning Plan.

The impact we expect on the partecipant is mainly the improving of the resources to approach the condition of deep social exclusion. Building new tools and new way to solve the difficulties and the complexity linked with the homeless condition it will become a new way to work for the social and sanitary workers employed in the organizations involved in the project. All partners undertake to include the project as an on-going item at all relevant meetings involving staff at their organisation. We anticipate that visits may introduce partners to new ways of thinking about, delivering and managing education and training and it is anticipated that visits will have an immediate effect on some partners, who will be able to adapt good practice that they see in other partners. Based on the better understanding of other partners', their cultures and methodologies we will involve relevant new elements into our respective methodologies and modify or update our respective organisational curriculums and practices.

 

--> What is the desired impact of the project at the local, regional, national, European and/or international levels ?

We envisage that this project will have an impact within each partner organisation, each region or country that the partners operate in and throughout the EU via the identification and analysis of the differences and similarities that leads to the recognition of common models, protocols, guidelines, structures, mechanisms, policies, processes, etc relating to good practice in the training of adults as trainers. We expect the following specific impacts: 1. Learners (ie: social and health workers employed in the organizsations involved in the project) to better develop their individual skills and competences, which will help them to improve their capacity to effectively approach groups and individuals in the various marginalised, isolated and vulnerable communities that partner organisations engage with 2. Partner organisations to have identified models of good practices in the contact, support and help of homeless people and psychiatric distress people and this information to be disseminated within each partner organisation, other organisations working with the same or similar target groups in the partner organisation's country 3. Partner organisations to identify models of good practices in the monitoring and evaluation of training learning by doing programme; this information will be disseminated within each partner organisation, other organisations delivering education to the same or similar communities in each country and the wider lifelong learning community across Europe 4. Improvements in the delivery of training to our learners (ie: our trainers) by our staff We expect to gaining, at the end of the project, the opportunity to show and share the results and the guidelines elaborated with regional, national and european institutions to discuss and propose new politics and new intervention strategy on the homeless question. At regional level we expect the opportunity to open discussion tables focused on the homeless question with other organizations working on our same field and with the institutions.

 

-->  How will you measure the previously mentioned impacts?

We will measure the impact expected on the partecipant through the analysis of the diffusion and the utilization of the tools built
during the project and of the good practices evidenced.
At regional level : The organization of meetings in regions to bring as many actors together . The number of participants of this event can show as an indicator of how much the theme of the project will be disseminated. In addition, the number of press articles, the visitors of websites and the frequenting of relevant forums of social media more meaningful indicators that provide information on the effectiveness of the project and its activities .
We will measure the impact expected at regional level through the number of tables to discuss and share the project's results
realized.
Istitutional level  We will measure the impact on the institutions through the number of public meetings will be organized and the opportunities we will realize to discuss and share the project's results in the istitutional seats.

Another indicator will be contacts resulting from the project work and people and institutions have achieved in other parts of Europe.

 

  

 

SMES-Europa - Secretary   Tel. / fax: (+) 32.2.5385887 -    mob; +32.475634710       -   E-mail: smeseu@smes-europa.org