Project:  PERSON   FIRST  2022-24

EMERGENCY  and   REHABILITATION  promoting
accessibility - improve e-quality -  reinforce co-working

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

CONTEXT/BACKGROUND

• WHY despite increasing the number and diversity of services offered, despite professionalism and important training for workers, despite increasing social and health budget, especially in many metropolis, a certain number of homeless & mentally ill people - seemed - preferred to stay on the street rather than accept the solution offered by the services ?

• Are the interventions integrate social & health, coherent with real request of person in need, respectful of the dignity, accessible to marginalized and excluded people everywhere they are, congruent and sustainable?

• Are sufficient and adequate services in emergency centers?

FROM ASSISTANCE TO PARTICIPATION
To identify models and good practices to facilitate ACCESS of homeless people to SERVICES and to enable social and health workers, of public and private sectors to meet Homeless Mentally Ill People where they are.

The Dignity and Well-being (D-&-WB) SMES project to address especially at those workers who are particularly confronted with people living on the margins, with complex social & health problems and needs.

The project propose these specific objectives:

1. Promote and facilitate networking and a great collaboration among the workers of Institutions, Organizations, Associations involved in the ‘extreme precariousness’ field, in order to achieve effective synergies and transform the different daily practices into effective networking models.

2. Building the capacities of each participant, through international and intersectoral exchanges, through study's visits, workshops promoting listening and confrontation about the differences both of the problems and of the methodologies and adequate and efficient answers to be adapted

3. Identify efficient and innovative services and structures able to prevent the chronicity of problems sometimes only social or health problems, recommending absolute priorities both in terms of prevention and sustainability.

4. Involve all civil society: politicians, administrators, citizens and media, because this is a structural problem of society and not only and specific for professional workers .

5. Life-long learning: taking advantage of this opportunity to continue in this initiative by fostering the progressive establishment of a network that aims at continue even after the project has been completed.

This project will to involve partners working especially in 4 different sectors, who are 4 pillars in supporting inclusive and participative projects:

1. Social Assistance;

2. Mental health;

3. Housing sector;

4. Participation citizenship.

To involve in co-working professional workers in social – health - mental health field, in private and public services, including volunteers’ people, who, day by day, are faced with a set of old and new issues, complex needs, with political and social pressures, far from the ethical respect of person dignity.

DESCRIPTION OF ACTIVITIES

1. QUESTIONNAIRE : to promote, by means of a questionnaire elaborated with the collaboration of the university partner KUL, an initial and reciprocal knowledge of both the partners of the project working in favour of people in a situation of great social and health precariousness and the Associations offering emergency services in the different partner countries.

2. 50 PROFILES collected by Each Partner about SERVICES and PERSON in need, concerning accessibility and welcome - e-quality and congruence - sustainability and care. These Profiles will be collected in final synthetic report.

3. 4  STUDY’s VISITS of SERVICES in 4 European countries, each two months, concerning the 4th fields : social – health – housing – recovery, including 4th inter-vision workshops after study's visits program - in order to deepest exchange visions about people – services – method, collecting through a common protocol and final small seminar

4. 4  WORKSHOPS and small seminars - after study's visits program - in order to deepest exchange visions about people – services – method, collecting through a common protocol.

5.  4  WEBINARS alternating with study visits in order deepest analyse the PROFILES / Narratives collected by Each Partner about ‘PERSON’ in need and ‘SERVICES’ offered concerning accessibility and quality - congruence & sustainability.
   These Profiles will be collected in final synthetic report.

6. EVENT & CONFERENCE: plaidoyer

   >   1st semester 2024 :  event at Eu Parliament Brussels;

   >   2nd semester 2023 : XV Conference SMES in Brussels

METHODOLOGY to be used in carrying out the project : learning  for teaching

1. Observe and listening carefully : visiting the services system,  listen and observe.

2. Evaluate participating at inter-vision meetings with the colleagues.

3. Disseminate  the information concerning  prevention and innovation

OBJECTIVES : What do you want to achieve by implementing the project?

The title of our project ‘Person First’ was chosen by analogy with the ‘Housing First’ approach in the fight against homelessness. Without denying the importance and effectiveness of Housing First policies, our project starts from the premise that shelters and related services will keep playing an indispensable role as ‘entry-level’ services for homeless people.

The fact that tens of thousands of people still live and sleep in the streets of Europe, despite the existence of shelters, calls into question the quality of these services: apparently, there is a mismatch between the needs of homeless persons and the services offered to them.

Homelessness is often a state of mental rather than material distress. Instead of reducing the role of shelters to basic material services (a roof, a bed, a shower, a breakfast etc.) we see shelters as a person-centered place of encounter crossroads, diagnosis observatory and re-connecting bridge. The fight against homelessness and housing exclusion is gaining momentum in European social policy.

The covid-19 crisis has raised awareness of the poor hygienic conditions in reception facilities and probably force shelters to invest in more decent infrastructure and, in this sense, contribute to enhancing the quality of the services on offer. The lockdown measures also revealed the need for more integrated service provision – including mental healthcare, as residents had to stay in shelters 24/7 and for longer periods. Interestingly, homeless services as well as policy makers discovered the effectiveness of integrated approaches.

This experience will undoubtedly inform the implementation of Principle 19c of the European Pillar of Social Rights (‘adequate shelter and services for homeless people in order to promote their social inclusion’). Through a combination of peer learning, research, training and dissemination, our project aims to contribute to a set of social minimum standards for the quality of emergency (or should we say ‘re-emergence’?) services for homeless people.

Our project will also include opportunities for dialogue with (selforganisations of) homeless people, so that they can voice their own needs and expectations from services. In the final stage, we aim to share our conclusions with national and European policy makers, because national action plans to fight homelessness should raise the quality - and European social minimum standards should prevent the degradation of services in regions / cities where homeless services are being commercialised.

FROM ASSISTANCE TO PARTICIPATION that's the main objective of "Dignity and Well-being” : to identify models and good practices to facilitate ACCESS of homeless people to SERVICES and to enable social and health workers, of public and private sectors to meet HOMELESS mentally ill people where they are. The D-&-WB project to address especially at those who are particularly confronted with people living on the margins, with complex social & health problems and needs. We propose these specific objectives:

1. Promote and facilitate networking and a great collaboration among the workers of Institutions, Organizations, Associations involved in the ‘extreme precariousness’ field, in order to achieve effective synergies and transform the different daily practices into effective networking models.

2. Building the capacities of each participant, through international and intersectorial exchanges, through study's visits, workshops promoting listening and confrontation about the differences both of the problems and of the methodologies and adequate and efficient answers to be adapted

3. Identify efficient and innovative services and structures able to prevent the chronicisation of problems sometimes only social or health problems, recommending absolute priorities both in terms of prevention and Implementation: What activities are you going to implement?

RESULTS :  what project results and other outcomes do you expect your project to have?

   -  1. Improving the knowledge of professionals

   -  2. Participation of the institution and policy makers in health and social services

   -  3. Participation of formal and informal training

   -  4. Transforming the charitable approach with homeless in respect of the fundamental rights

   -  5. Building capacity to co-working together: public & private services – health & social sectors

   -  6. Improving knowledge about complex needs and adequate answer.

   -  7. Cooperation partnerships in vocational education and trainingThis application form consists of the following main sections

FOLLOW-UP

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.

SPECIFIC IMPACTS  expected :

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.

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

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

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.