Homelessness is a widespread problem in Europe, it affects different categories of citizens and is on the rise. The profile of the homeless population has changed: it affects families, women, young people, migrants, people with precarious jobs, working poors. According to FEANTSA (2018) there are ca. 700.000 homeless in Europe, often off the radar of social welfare systems or inadequately protected. COVID-19 will radicalize such emergency. HOOD (Homeless’ open dialogue) will focus on adopting an early approach with people who have ended up living on the streets recently and with people at risk. The idea is that it is necessary to intervene as quickly as possible to avoid that such person moves from being without a house to assuming traits commonly associated to longer-term homeless, in a state of severe marginalization, with heavier consequences on one person’s life and on the entire society. Social professionals (intended in broad terms as: educators, counselors, mediators, therapists, psychologists, care consultants, social anthropologists, social workers) dealing with these profiles will be engaged in HOOD activities, will share their expertise acquired in local contexts and will be trained in the use of new methodologies to better engage and support the homeless with a preventive approach. The project will involve 6 partners from 5 European countries. -4 operative partners: Ufficio Pio (Leader, IT), SJD (ES), Project UDENFOR (DK), KLIMAKA (GR) 2 to 5 professional for each organization will be directly involved in project activities and will transfer their knowledge and lessons learned up to 20 professionals per country, with spillover effects on other organisations. -2 scientific partners: UniTO (IT) and CESIS (PT). Associated partners will be FEANTSA (BE), fio.PSD (IT) and HOGAR Sì (ES). HOOD has 3 Intellectual Outputs: IO1 Profile study: aiming at identifying the common profiles of people who have recently become homeless or at risk of becoming it, in order to 1) raise awareness and promote prevention measures to a wide community of professionals and organisations dealing with these profiles and 2) to provide social professionals with a tool for implementing early intervention measures, by focusing on inclusion and training and on connections on the territory. IO2 HOOD intervention models and practices: it will focus on the design of innovative intervention models and practices, by drawing inspiration specifically from the “Open Dialogue” and the approach of “Capacitive co-design” for the treatment of people identified by IO1. This approach allows to implement a method of meeting between professionals and recipients with the aim of identifying objectives and strategies to empower the person to be protagonist of its own change, building an emancipation path. Partners will design and test the models sharing experience at international level. IO3 Intervision methodology and platform: it will focus on the design and testing of an intervision methodology and an online tool (platform) targeted at social professionals dealing with people who have recently become homeless and people at risk. This methodology and platform will support professionals with an equivalent level of preparation to reflect on their practices, supporting each other in improving their skills, in a kind of peer-to-peer coaching. Partners will design the methodologies and test them during the project lifetime. The project activities will have a broad impact on the involved social professionals and organisations: improved understanding of recipients’ needs, involvement in the development of methodologies focused on valuing the recipients’ potential and competences, improved engagement capacity, improved coaching and training methodologies, improved technical skills to make better use of the different resources available for recipients, capacity to design effective training and guidance paths, improved interaction with other operators, increased self-confidence and self-esteem, improved sense of ownership and perception of being an agent of change also through the co-creation of tools, higher ability to act in a peer-to-peer perspective, by adopting of an Open Dialogue approach. The project will also involve: -other social purpose/welfare organizations who can replicate and experiment HOOD methodologies, both working through an early intervention approach and with recipients with a history of homelessness chronicity; -local communities, most notably those dealing with vulnerable categories and actions to promote their inclusion; -policy makers, decision makers and stakeholders (from small scale to international level); -the research community. The long-term benefit will be an increased awareness of the phenomena of new homelessness and of homelessness risk, an increased knowledge and application of prevention measures and of the developed methodologies among European social professionals and organisations.
The HOOD project focused on three main aims: 1) Enriching and expanding the skills and competencies of social professionals who work with homeless people, in line with the priority of EXTENDING AND DEVELOPING THE COMPETENCIES OF EDUCATORS AND OTHER PERSONNEL WHO SUPPORT ADULT LEARNERS. Moving from the experience of the partners’ organisation, the project has created an exciting learning contest in which partners could cooperate to understand the Early Intervention framework and to learn and test a new pedagogical methodology: the Enabling Co-planning, that draws from the Open Dialogue approach. 2) Promoting SOCIAL INCLUSION, through the spreading of the Enabling Co-planning approach. Indeed, Enabling Co-planning is a right-based approach that fosters people's full participation in citizenship, independently from their characteristics, abilities, and resources. 3) SUPPORTING SOCIAL WORKERS (intended the wide range of professions engaged in social work), testing with them the practice of Intervision. Intervision is a peer-to-peer methodology of learning and work support, that contributed to the recognition and transmission of the social workers involved skills.
Homelessness is a rising phenomenon in Europe, and it affects different categories of people. Over the last years, European governments, NGOs and third-sector entities engaged in the effort to move from the staircase approach to a right-based one, thanks to the driving force of the Housing First and Housing Led models. Previous policies and interventions, which considered the house as a prize to be earned, risking blaming the victims of homelessness, have been questioned. Ongoing transformation inspired most recent national strategies developed also by the HOOD partner countries and highlighted new needs, fostered by entities as FEANTSA, Fio.PSD and HOGAR SÍ. 1) Among these, there is the need to move from an emergency perspective to a prevention one. To this end, deepening and disseminating the Early Intervention framework could constitute a step towards prevention. 2) Secondly, to accompany the Housing First and Housing Led intervention models, the need to develop pedagogical planning tools and approaches right-based with a specific structured came up. 3) Furthermore, the work of social professionals itself emerged as a resource that must be protected, creating spaces for support and collective construction of knowledge.