CASVISITS SCOOLS This project is striving to improve the capacities of youth workers - streetworkers and thus increase the quality of youth work in 6 member states of the EU. It is devoted to supporting cooperation among streetworkers on international level, exchange of good practice, sharing and confronting ideas, practices and methods in the field of COOPERATION OF SCHOOLS AND STREETWORK. Streetworkers often work with children who are leaving the formal education system too early (they do not finish the elementary school, or they are not qualified, NEETs). The specific partnership of this project will provide inspiration - how can we work with this group of youngsters, how to help them get back to the "system", job market, get qualification. The aim is to foster the European objective of promoting high-quality youth work with marginalized youth (or vulnerable youth, youth with fewer opportunities) and professionalization of youth - street - workers. The project partners, all working with a special method of youthwork - streetwork - will focus on sharing good practice regarding cooperation of schools (formal education) and streetwork (informal education). Sharing of good practice will be done via method of short, but intense and detailed reciprocal study visits of project partners from the Czech Republic, Slovenia, the Netherlands, Germany, Estonia and Finland. All project partners are joining together large numbers of outreach workers in their countries. Eg. Czech Streetwork Association (CAS), the applicant, joins together more than 90 outreach work organizations from all over the Czech Republic. A collection of professional reports from the study visits will be produced to allow as many interested stakeholders as possible to gain good practice and experience from this series of study visits.
We wanted to support cooperation of schools ("part of formal education system") and streetwork ("part of informal education system"). Cooperation of these two sectors enables more support of vulnerable youth/youth with fewer opportunities. The main objective of the project is to develop exchange of good practice of the outreach/street social work on an international level and increase quality and effectiveness of work with youth with fewer opportunities. Specific objectives of the project are a) identify the most actual and problematic topics of outreach/street work services regarding the COOPERATION WITH SCHOOLS, share them (national and international level) and find possible solutions; b) share these solutions, publish them and attempt to implement them on national level; c) apply the good practice gained by the project by the participating NGOs and secondary by those NGOs who get the project outputs indirectly; d) apply the good practice gained by the project when working with users of outreach services e)networking, cooperation. Also, the strategic partnership of this project strives to increase the visibility of streetwork at local, regional and international level.
The project was based on current situation in the project countries, as well as the experience of the (social) streetworkers. We have involved the group of the streetworkers who are active in the interventions with youth with fewer opportunities.They need to have access to new skills and more effective ways to work with other stakeholders, namely teachers and other co-workers of the school system. The project partners´ experience with SCHOOL-STREETWORK COOPERATION varied: e.g. the "naturally ingrown connection" in the Dutch community approach vs. a very low level of cooperation in the CZ where the sectors are far too divided and interdepartmental cooperation almost does not exist.. We have chosen project partners from countries, towns and organizations that are experienced in the field and are willing to share their experience.