In Giessen-Vogelsberg region as well as in North Lanarkshire and Järfälla there is a great number of students with problems during their school career that lead to academic failure and drop out of the system (also known as NEETS). This starts with negative results in several subjects, with problems in behaviour, truancy and absenteeism and very often goes along with educational resistance. In the partner regions exist legal regulations and frameworks of support and help. There are teachers with special tasks as well as social workers, psychologists and persons of other professions to support the work of the regular teachers. The reality shows that the effect of all activities is limited often by the cooperation and the coordination of the acting persons. There are different people sent by different institutions with different professional backgrounds and different tasks, responsibilities, aims and instruments and sometimes even different employers who are dealing with the same students without knowing sufficiently one from each other. The efficiency of activities and support needs to be increased. There has to be better outcome and success of the mutual work. At the moment there is a lack of guidance and cooperation of these persons who should actually work as multiprofessional teams. Existing frameworks and rules are not well known or followed sufficiently and the different activities of the acting people are less often coordinated in an adequate way. We assume that this lack has a negative influence on the efficiency of multiprofessional teams. In order to increase the opportunities of students, who are in danger to fail and to decrease - the number of students, failing during their school career or dropping out of the system without any leaving certificate - the number of students with problems in behaviour and special social and emotional needs we want to inhance multiprofessional working. Processes of failure during the school career are to be counteracted through to a better coordination and cooperation of acting persons, institutions and instruments. The partner institutions in the project, local authorities, psychological service, county council, municipality, primary and secondary schoools will focus on this issue by a survey on the quantity and quality of cooperation in multiprofessional teams in schools. As an outcome there will be a collection of relevant data and a manual for headmasters and every acting person in the frame of support and guidance in schools. Task groups to steer and accompany the process will be established.
In the partner regions Giessen-Vogelsberg (Hessen/Germany) as well as in North Lanarkshire (Scotland/UK) and Järfälla (Sweden) there is a great number of students who face challenges which impact on their school career which can lead to disengagement from school. These challenges can lead to poor performance, challenging behaviour, truancy and absenteeism. In the partner regions involved in the EMPOWER project there are various legal regulations and frameworks of support and help. There are teachers with special responsibilities as well as social workers, psychologists and external partners to support the young people. In advance of the project we made the assumption that there are too many different partners dealing with school absenteeism without knowing sufficiently one from the other or not having an overview on external support systems. It was also assumed that the knowledge of existing rules and legal regulations, an important factor for fighting absenteeism successfully, needs improvement among pedagogical stuff in schools The main aim of the project was to fight school absenteeism by improving coordination and multi professional cooperation in school. It was agreed that the impact of partnership working is dependent on the quality of cooperation and coordination. To prove the above mentioned assumptions, we conducted a survey with more than 400 participants in the three partner regions. On the basis of the findings and results of this survey we created a three national versions and an international version of a handbook that gives headmasters and other stakeholders in school the possibility to improve steering of multi professional working in the frame of school absenteeism significantly. The handbook was published in Mai/June 2016 and presented to and disseminated to headmasters and responsible persons in the partner regions. The evaluation of the use of the handbook is planned for autumn 2016. The handbook describes action fields in schools which play a central role in fighting school absenteeism. This is based on the results of the surveys as well as on relevant data and recommendations of headmasters, teachers and social workers in the participating regions. In addition, there are some examples that show good practice in the three European regions. All used material, surveys, presentations etc. are published on the project website: www.giessen-nlc-jarfalla.de.