Context and objective: This project focuses on multidisciplinary support for positive changes in families in difficult situations. Our objective is to stimulate development in multidisciplinary cooperation that should include various specialists as equal partners as well as receivers of care (“laymen”), who should also be involved. The project aims to contribute further to the development of quality of multidisciplinary cooperation. Everyone speak about multidisciplinary collaboration but often the result is just a lot of meetings between professionals where the clients are not participating, creating more hours of futile professional talk that is disconnected from the lives of the people the professionals are supposed to help. The problem is very serious and the only solution is to start to train professionals, to teach them how to generate dialogues with families and how to work in a client centred rather than a professional centred manner. Other problem is that very often “laymen” (people with their own experience in dealing with difficult situations in families) are not really involved in this multidisciplinary cooperation. In this area there is a lack of educational opportunities not only for professionals but as well as for “laymen” and not only in the countries involved in the project. Thanks to such training/ educational opportunity: 1) "laymen" could become peer consultants and ambassadors in their area of difficult experience and could help others in a similar situation to become active participants and initiators of multidisciplinary support and 2) professionals will be able to not only be an effective and constructive part of the team, but also to coordinate multidisciplinary teams. Professionals from organizations involved in the project are working with children in families in difficult situations and crisis according to the concept of social constructivism and dialogical, collaborative and solution focused approaches. These approaches create a space for expressing and understanding different perspectives, as well as gaining confidence and experiencing empathy. Activities In the project we plan to develop Train the trainer training (O1, O2) for professionals of project partners and also manuals (O3, O4) and innovative trainings for “laymen” and for professionals focused on helping them providing multidisciplinary support on currently widely spread constructivist basis and above mentioned approaches. These trainings will be blended and will include face to face (O5, O6) and also e-learnings (O7, O8). Other activities include Best practice guidelines / report on multidisciplinary support models (O10) and Development of multidisciplinary teams – MDT (O9). Better teamwork in mental health services increases job satisfaction. MDTs can promote better coordination and quality of integrated care by fostering collaboration between professionals and laymen. Results, impact and potential longer term benefits: By preparing combined training sessions, as well as the manuals, we would like to achieve the sustainability of the project. For the future we are planning to develop this topic further by maintaining free e-learning portal as well as by providing such trainings and supporting MDTs. Sustainability and transferability will be secured also by language variability as the trainings can be held in English or Czech or Slovak (or combination) and also manuals will be available in these languages. Participants of trainings will develop and strengthen different competences and will become more emp and owered competent in dealing with uncertain and ambiguous situations, building up resilience for managing positive changes. Professionals will also become more competent in involving laymen in searching for solutions, facilitating MDT, etc. Direct impact should be also on development of multidisciplinary teams (MDT), their sustainability and their support. MDT teams can initiate or transform community services. Longer term impact and benefit is in increasing the professionalism of all subjects involved in supporting the family and protecting children and raising awareness of the issues of the professional and general public. It could also have impact on other relevant stakeholders – e.g. public employment services, counselling centres, offices of labour, centres for children and families, institutions that educate these professionals, societies and organisations that deal with clients and families in difficult situations or schools. These institutions can broaden their networks as they will be invited for conferences that take place during the project. The direct impact of the project is to educate as many professional and laymen as possible and to further disseminate the trainings into other countries. The broadened network that will be established by our cooperation will be an additional means for sustainability.
By doing the project, we wanted to stimulate inclusive development of multidisciplinary support and collaboration in positive changes during difficult family situations. Through the support of multidiscipli-nary teams consisting of families, their members and also helping professionals in the field, we wanted to stimulate personal development and social changes while gaining and development of key compe-tencies. The purpose was mainly to enable gaining new competencies in thinking about the participant’s own personality, in effective time and information management, in constructive collaboration with others, in building endurance, and in conducting the process of personal changes. We expect that new competencies of families and other multidisciplinary team members will help in getting over uncertain-ty, over difficult life situations, support well-being, which leads to maintaining good physical and men-tal health, and help lead a life focused on the future while also being empathic and conduct conflicts in an inclusive and supportive environment. Basic knowledge, skills and attitudes connected to the new competencies create a conceptual environment for successful personal relationships and attending social events.
The reason of creating this partnership and signing up for this challenge was mainly the need to stren-gthen social inclusion of parents and other family members, peers and laymen advisors as key, relevant and expert actors of positive changes in the difficult situations in their lives for multidisciplinary collaboration and multidisciplinary teams of supporting professionals. Contents, topics and programmes generated in the project were trying, and still are trying, to support the development of inclusion and mental health in the areas of social, civil, labour and intercultural competences, and eliminate discrimination, segregation, barriers, stigmatization, violence, academic unsuccess, etc., across the system and multiple resorts. The goal of the whole project was multilevel support in creating and development of multidisciplinary collaboration and multidisciplinary teams, specifically during the utilisation of approaches coming from social constructivism and a solution focused approach, mainly in multidisciplinary support of families. The project was done in the years 2019-2022 and also included direct support of multidisciplinary team members in the form of pilot training and mentoring. Many people from the Czech Republic and Slovakia were a part of this project, international guarantee of offered approaches was secured by Loek Schoenmakers (the Netherlands) and Ben Furman (Finland) through their organisations. The main coordinator of the project was the Catholic University in Ružomberok. The partnership was also represented by: CZE – Narativ, collective, SVK – Institute of dialogical practices, FIN - Lyhytterapiainstituutti Oy (Ben Furman’s institute) and NED - Appreciative Change Work-s (Loek Schoenmaker’s institute). Innovations, methods and approaches in the project went beyond our expectations. We are convinced that positive changes are possible in spite of destiny, trauma or different difficult conditions of some families. It is much easier to achieve change in a positive and supporting environment where professionals and laymen are equal partners of multidisciplinary teams based on a broad platform of support in their community. As the name suggests, the project was focused on building, strengthening and sustainability of multidisciplinary support in the area of positive changes in families. Currently, these people work in correlation to the social constructivism concept, transformative dialogue concept and the solution focused approach. They utilise these as basic working tools. In the topic of multidisciplinary collaboration in the area of family support there was a lack of educational, systematic or longterm sustainable opportunities not only for professionals but even for “laymen” (people with their own experiences in solving difficult situations in families). These “laymen” became (thanks to the project), together with helping professionals, one “learning community” where everyone, no matter the profession, cultural background or mobility, is an expert in his own life. Also consultants, ambassadors of authentic experience in difficult situations. The main obtained knowledge of the attendants was that there is no longer the need to divide us into laymen and professionals but there is the need to connect us as experts in supportive relationships du-ring handling difficult situations. We collaborate conceptually in multidisciplinary team, support good practices, positive changes and innovatively include families, which are in crisis or have multiple limitations and disabilities, at school, in a community environment, etc. During the project, it was confirmed multiple times during discussions with associated partners that diversity of people should be a part of multidisciplinary collaboration as equal partners of families and also as recipients of care (family members). These people should actively contribute in the discussion about their support and help make decisions about its approaches and implementation. Today, in the network of multidisciplinary support, we can help families in a similar situation become active changemakers. And because of this “new” reality, our project was created. It is an innovation of collaboration and support in the area of family mental health, education of key adults and their inclusion. It methodically goes beyond and links goals of participating institutions in protection of mental health of the EU citizens across all resorts.