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.
The project Dignity & Well-Being: exchange for changing (D&WB) aimed 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 as well as promoting improvements in terms of quality, innovation and excellence in the training of professional workers in social and mental health field, especially for those working with homeless and refugees with mental illness. To accomplish these two general objectives, based on an international network of professionals working with homeless in different kinds of organizations and countries, the project developed four Short term joint staff training events that consisted on the presentation and discussions of cases studies, which allowed to identify and learn new and innovative solutions and, at the same time, to produce a manual, a training curriculum and training tools that can be shared and spread among other professionals and organizations. The project network included eight organizations that have a long experience on the delivery 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 used a methodology based on intervision by peers in Short term joint staff training events with relatively small groups of experienced professionals. Through a program of visits and workshops, the participants had the opportunity to present case profiles, focused on situations of homelessness, to evaluate similarities and differences in the difficulties and interventions and to identify good practices considering the four pillars initially identified (Social, Health, Housing and Recovery) and three beams introduced during the project (Outreach, Networking and Staff care). From these four Short term joint staff training events and a lot of research work between them, resulted two intellectual outputs: A training curriculum aimed at the grounding of professionals working in the social and of mental health areas to understand and respond appropriately to the needs of homeless people and a manual reflecting practical approaches to working with homeless people with mental health problems. Both intellectual outputs are complementary and can be used in the delivery of lifelong learning activities aimed at the professionals working with the homeless. The Multiplier Event gave the opportunity to present the Intellectual Outputs and to discuss the conclusions of the project with a wider forum, with more participants and experts from other countries outside the partnership. The partners implemented several dissemination activities taking the results of the project to a wider audience, raising the awareness of the complexity of homeless conditions. The dissemination of the project was, therefore, an opportunity to disseminate values and information on the approach to these complex problems and the mentioned audience are the main stakeholders but, at the same time, the vehicle to spread information and training tools that will help professionals in their efforts to fight social exclusion. Partners will continue to develop activities of the same scope and promote new projects together or with other partners in the context of a wider international network of professionals working with homeless in different kinds of organizations and countries.