Programme: Erasmus+
Key Action: Cooperation for Innovation and the Exchange Good Practices.
Action: Strategic Partnerships.
Agreement nº: 2017-1-IT02-KA204_036917
Project Total Duration: 24 months
Start Date: 16-10-2017
End Date: 15-10-2019
1. PARTNERSHIP
Project Promoter: OPEN GROUP, Soc. Coop., Italy
Project Partners
SPOLECZNA AKADEMIA NAUK, Poland; ASP CITTA DI BOLOGNA, Italy; CESTA ASOCIACE STREETWORK, Z.S., Czech Republic; FEANTSA, Brussels; DOCUMENTA, Spain; fio. PSD, Italy; EAPN CANTABRIA, Spain; DIESIS COOP, Brussels; PMFF, Poland.
2. OVERVIEW
Relevant Topics
ICT – new technologies – digital competences
Description
ELASTIC We think this name symbolizes good the ability of change, the need for adjustment and trying new forms and working solutions, particularly important for the difficult role of social workers and welfare organizations.
In recent years, social work with adults in extreme vulnerability has changed its priorities due to:
– Increasing diversity of interventions and types of end user (new immigration, poverty and types of drug addiction, etc.)
– Increasing diversity of professionals involved in the social service system (teachers, instructors, psychologists, psychiatrists, street workers, consultants, health workers, educators, facilitators, mediators, etc.)
This has led to 2 consequences for social workers:
– Individual work with end users is becoming more complex due to language barriers, cultural misunderstandings, difficulties in appraising new needs, inability to match old answers to new demands;
– Work within organizations, both inside single work teams, and among different teams within the same service system, is unable to ensure the complementarity and effectiveness of the entire intervention. Different professionals have often very different methodologies, languages and timescales.
The aim of the project is to increase digital skills of professionals working in the field of education and social inclusion of adults in extreme vulnerability situations (e.g. homeless, migrant, asylum seekers, refugees, etc.). The project plans an integrated course of experiences and practices exchange among European partner organizations and specific training events.
The project will identify innovative and technological solutions (ICT) to facilitate:
– Teamwork and collective creation of social knowledge;
– Communication among professionals and among organizations;
– Information flows between formal and informal participants, etc.
The project will identify new practices, develop new skills and try new instruments to enhance the effectiveness of local welfare and community services addressed to adult population at risk of marginalization and exclusion as well as give new tools to social workers to produce digital documentation to be used both in their work with end users and to spread their organizations competences.
Longer term benefits: throughout the project all significant competences, instruments and practices that will emerge as useful to our aim will be collected and elaborated. The dissemination part of ELASTIC aims to spread and reinforce them, the drafting of a Guide for the correct use of ICT in the social work with vulnerable adults, the subsequent spread of it through local, national and international networks and the organization of a final event through which project results and development prospects will be presented to a wide public will boost ELASTIC’s long term benefits
Results Expected
– Achievement of a clear picture of the current methods and tools used by the partners to carry out their projects and related communication activities; identification of their strengths and weaknesses through a process of exchange and common reflection; Attention will be devoted to communication, both internal and external to the welfare system, also in order to improve the knowledge of the services in citizens and local stakeholders.
– Identification of specific tools that can improve communication flows.
– Identification of open source tools, possibly online, that can improve immediately workflows of project participants.
– Ongoing implementation of the training events in order to increase the digital competences of the project target: digitization of processes, cloud computing, management and enhanced communication on social networks, crowd funding online, use of google support levels (google grants).
– Construction of a transferable pattern, that could also be applied to other contexts (e.g. with young people or the elderly) or by similar associations in new territories.
3. TARGET GROUPS
– Social Workers
– Frontline Management
– Back-Officer
– Social Policy Officer
– Data-Analyst Officer (expert in analysis of social exclusion)
– Volunteers
– Students
– Researchers
– Trainers and Learners
