This project aimde at developing competences of social workers working with Housing First, in the field of Housing, Care and Guidance for homeless people, through innovative methods and approaches. In addition, participants will improve their inter-cultural understanding, raising tolerance and breaking stereotypes, enhancing group working skills, presentation skills, leadership and send of initiative. But, moreover, participants will have a chance to exchange information and learn from their colleagues in real time from partner countries, thus raising their international cooperation and communication skills. In collaboration with 5 other countries, we wanted to strengthen our intenational network. We also wanted to exchange knowledge and experiences through a website (www.itcanalsobedifferent.com). ICABD is a methodology developed by HVO-QUerido (and one of our IO during our K2) and is an alternative way of working, a willingness to look for alternative solutions in situations where you are stuck, that looks at the YES mentality and the passion and drive of social workers. The visit will enhance professional development and modernization of working style in the field of housing, care and guidance in our organization. With the job shadowing, employees will take ICABD examples, spread these best practises and train their colleagues. From our previous K2 project, we mainly focused on ICABD examples related to loneliness. But the social workers can also focus on addiction, creativity, harm reduction, cultural change, peer workers, destigmatization and diversity. We think that an exchange can be of great added value, because the employees can develop themselves more, learn from other countries and bring new creative ideas into our organization. At the start of our project we started to focus on Community Living, because we were looking for new innovative ideas to provide a home for our clients where the neighbourhood is involved. Most visits were therefore adapted to this theme during the project.
HVO-Querido is a welfare organisation based in the Netherlands (mainly in Amsterdam) that offers care, guidance and care to people who want to get back in control of their own lives. Within HVO-Querido we officially started with the Centre of Expertise on 1 Aug 2019. Through this centre we are able to share all our knowledge, expertise and skills connected to Housing First within the organization and disseminate this at a local, national and international level. To gain and continuously develop our knowledge, this project can help us to get new input from other countries. In addition to sharing knowledge, the structure of the Centre of Expertise also contributes to monitoring and innovating the methodology, philosophy and development in the field of homelessness. These exchanges allow us to continue to innovate and respond to developments within Europe. The city of Amsterdam is growing and can't house all our clients in independent houses throughout the city and is looking for new, innovating ways to house homeless people while working on social inclusion and projects where they try to let them be part of society as much as possible. Community Living is one of the solutions to house our clients and get commitment from the citizens of Amsterdam to let them be part of the neighbourhood. For this reason we would like to orientate in other countries and see what they do about Housing First in combination with Community Living, in any kind of way.