This two-year project connects four European institutions in four European countries: France, Belgium, Italy and Lithuania. The four institutions share the same priority, namely the quality of support for the young people with disabilities that they host. Three of these institutions are well acquainted with each other, already involved in an Erasmus+ project for young people, their families and professionals on the use of screens : “Net ou p@s Net”. The organized stays have already shown the interest and the relevance of these exchanges. The differences in culture but above all in practices from one country to another enrich collective thinking. For example, a country like Italy is more advanced than France in terms of inclusion. We therefore want to go further with this project, sending only professionals to discover specific practices in each European structure. Two professionals per country and a director will go to different institutions for five days to observe their counterparts. Each professional and the director will alternate to have different visions. In the host country, they will not replace another professional but be there as an observer (“job-shadowing”), not to put them in difficulty. In their country of origin, they will be replaced during their absence to avoid putting their colleagues in difficulty with extra workload. These visits will be sources of analysis, sharing and elaboration on professional practices. When they return, the professionals will be able to present to their colleagues their observations and the analyzed modes of accompaniment that they will be able to experiment with, obviously taking into account the cultural differences between their countries. The objective is to benefit from the eyes of our European counterparts and to present our practices; to be able to feed on the experience of each; to learn from them. Such theoretical and practical elaboration will only improve the accompaniment of the young people in our structures. This will also allow professionals to take a step back from their practices. The directors will be able to have a different vision on the management of a medico-social establishment, and take inspiration from certain practices to improve the daily life of their structures. Comments will be transcribed and shared on a common digital tool. The relevance of certain practices could also be discussed with the financiers to be presented and included in public policies.
The idea was to make various professionals who support people with disabilities discover the practices used in other countries that also participated in this project (Belgium, Italy, France, Lithuania). The goal was to discover different practices that work or that have been tested without positive results. This makes it possible to try to reproduce these practices in the country of the participating professional and thus save time. Quite simply, being able to draw inspiration from an activity or a practice done with young people with disabilities. We also wanted to understand the political context of the country (operation of the school, financing of the structure, laws of the country and laws on the handicap) in order to tend towards a homogeneous functioning while keeping the specificity of each culture.
The professions of support for people with disabilities have evolved in recent years and they are still in constant evolution. This project allowed professionals to get out of their daily lives by going to discover what is being done in other countries. This allowed them to step back and see the progress of inclusion in other institutions. The Covid asked us to adapt by first stopping the project for almost 2 years. We requested an additional period of one year and had to send several professionals at the same time for the same stay. This allowed us to do as many trips as possible in a short time. It also allowed professionals from the same association to get to know each other and share their daily lives because even if they work in the same association, there may be differences in support from one establishment to another.