This project «Net ou p@s Net » will be carried out over two years by three European institutions from three EU countries: France, Belgium, Italy. The three institutions deal with and care for children and teenagers with psychic difficulties and behavioural problems which hamper their social integration. All three institutions are members of Métis-Europe, a European association which brings together professionals and any other people interested in treating this sort of psychological disorders. For some years now we have helped families to reflect together on the importance of family dynamics and the issue of screens and social media has become a recurring topic as a frequent source of conflicts. Our research and attendance at various seminars have enabled us to note how very few intergenerational opportunities are available to discuss and elaborate on the usage and abusage of screens in everyday life. Our partners having made the same observation, we have decided to join our forces and to pool our means to initiate and develop our reflexion at European level. A management team in which every institution is represented has been created and will meet 4 or 5 times a year. The intergenerational quality of the project is at the core of our strategy; it is indeed important that all participants discover the same technologies along the same chronology. “Screen-addiction” is more and more an issue in publications and it feeds all sorts of fears; that is why we want to ask the participants to question what everyone is doing in front of their screens and to try and find some meaning. During the two years of the project we will bring together groups of children and teenagers in each of our institutions to help them to reflect on their use of screens; we will also organise European meetings to provide opportunities for exchanging experiences and practices. As we know that working together on a shared medium makes communication easier, we have decided to initiate the joint creation by the youngsters and their educators of a digital product. We started with the maritime metaphor of surfing: on the seas and on the web – one needs to take precautions! "Net ou p@s Net", a digital game-like product will be elaborated jointly by the participants. It will be composed of a digital board and user-friendly interface where open questions will be addressed in short playlets enacted by the young people themselves from their own scenarios. The objective of those meetings is to develop -around the issue of “screen-addiction”- a European partnership which will benefit from the combination of various national perspectives. Cultural and professional differences enrich everyone’s practices. Each meeting will bring together about thirty young people accompanied by ten or twelve adults. The host institution will plan a programme to discover not only local traditions and cultural heritage, but also new start-up companies who will contribute to the general reflexion and to the production of the online games. The playlets will be conceived, enacted and filmed by the groups of European participants. During those meetings, all ideas and innovations will be pooled together; decisions and new openings will be devised jointly by the young people and the adults. In-between the meetings, communication will be made by email and eTwinning. The social inclusion of these young people is our priority and this project will give them a place and a role where they can express themselves in front of their peers. They will then be called upon to present their achievements in various places, on various occasions (other institutions, schools, seminars, etc.); it will be a wonderful opportunity for them to be valued and to increase their self-confidence. This two-year project will be constantly assessed and our reports will be published in specialist journals and on the internet. Our game "Net ou p@s Net" will be offered at the European level to be used in schools, parents’ associations and clubs. This first European partnership will be the basis for an objective reflexion to develop other partnerships around new issues, such as risky behaviours, for example.
This project, planned over two years, has brought together three institutions: one French, one Belgian and one Italian. The three establishments cater for youngsters with psychic disabilities which can impair their socialisation as they mostly affect their behaviour. These institutions are members of Métis-Europe, http://www.metis-europe.eu/ ,a European NGO which brings together professionals and any other person interested in the treatment of psychological problems developing in psychological and/or social difficulties, whose intensity of behavioural misdemeanour greatly impairs socialisation, access to learning and to citizenship. Each institution has its own specific set of practices to accompany and support the youngsters and their families, which is why we have chosen to join our reflexions together through this Erasmus project. We have accompanied families for several years now to help them to elaborate on their dynamics. The issue of screens has become recurrent and very often, a source of conflicts at home. Faced with the initial observation of a total lack of places where participants of all ages can debate and discuss together on the usage and abusage of screens, we decided to pool our resources to promote reflexion at the European level. The intergenerational approach is at the core of our project, as indeed everyone discovers the new technologies along the same timeline. Our objectives have been to allow the young people to be proactive and to go and discover by themselves -or to make others discover- the customs and traditions in the other countries. International meetings have been the opportunity for our youngsters to be with other youths, at the same time different and similar. They were able to realize that they shared the same difficulties, despite their different cultural environments. What was voiced by some was echoed by others while their cultural distance provided the very opportunity to be confronted with otherness. Over the two years of the project, we have encouraged exchanges about the use of screens among the young people, their families and the professionals in each country. These experiments have been shared in written accounts and audio recordings which have been transmitted to Pascal Minotte, a Belgian psychologist and researcher at CRESAM, who studied them and wrote an analysis, annexed herewith. Until the sanitary crisis, we have brought together groups of children and teenagers on each of our sites to reflect together on the use of screens and to share their practices. We kept to our initial metaphor of maritime sailing / internet surfing (precautions must be taken before venturing at sea under the best conditions, such as precautions must be taken before embarking on the internet) to promote and facilitate reflexion among all the participants in the project. Cultural and professional differences enrich everyone’s practices. The objective of this project is to open a space for shared reflexion for children, teenagers, and adults on the use of screens. The social inclusion of these youngsters remains a priority and we are giving them a space where they can express themselves in front of their peers. They have been, and will be, able to continue the presentation of their work, the game itself and their stays in the various places (institutions, schools, colloquiums…) to show their increased value and to develop self-confidence. The game "Net ou p@s Net", will be offered at European level to be distributed in primary and secondary schools, as well as in parents’ clubs. Its implementation will be carried out by one member of the pilot team, by l’AIRe (Association of ITEP and its French network), by IMP140 in Belgian and by EPTA in Italy. The objective of the stays was to develop a European partnership by uniting different national organisations; this wish has been largely achieved, the level of attainment exceeding our expectations: we were able to present our Erasmus project in various meetings or colloquiums, especially at the yearly EUROMET meeting, http://iteplapaternelle.fr/euromet/ , where a dozen of countries were represented and which took place in France in the presence of our Secretary of State, Sophie Cluzel. During the Easter holidays, a stay in Torino had been planned, where our Italian partners had scheduled cultural activities for the discovery of their region by the young Belgian and French participants during the week. Similarly, the final stay in Saint Malo, in July, which was to celebrate the end of the project with a sailing episode and a time for drawing conclusions between young people and adults, had to be cancelled. The interest of this European partnership, at the core of our project, remains the basis of an objective reflexion to develop new partnerships around new issues, such as risk-behaviours, for example. Each team is thinking about new follow-up avenues, despite the end of this project, funded by the Erasmus Agency.