ISPAW or Implementing Social Pathways to ameliorate the situation of wandering homeless persons

ISPAW is a Grundtvig Learning Partnerhsip whose aim is to transfer competences as well as to exchange professional methods helping social structures to welcome and to accompany homeless persons. The targets are associations or institutions which accommodate and coach youth suffering from family breakdown, on the way to marginalization and without a real home. The partnership gathers partners from France, Italy, Latvia,  Romania and Poland. 

The coordinator is a French association, SAUVEGARDE 56- SOS Accueil - CHRS Mosaïk (Lorient, Brittany, France). Other partner are Radar B (France), Centre for European Studies and Initiatives (Palermo, Sicily, Italy), ASSOCIATION FOR EDUCATION AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT (Calarasi, Romania), Association Positive Mind (Tukums, Latvia), DANMAR COMPUTERS (Rzeszow, Poland). 

OBJECTIVES

The main objective is to find out how to ameliorate the modalities of accompaniment and accommodation. The special objective is to adapt tools used to implement the social inclusion of young homeless persons. To achieve those aims we need to collect good practices and to exchange about it, but also to transfer the relevant ones which are not very wellknown. 

KICK OFF

Till now we have started the project by a first meeting in Tukums, Latvia. We have started the research and realize the disparities in terms of social policies,targets, concepts in the countries participating to the project. We focused on some terms to be better defined and understood by all partners, like Social inclusion, homeless, street persons, to be on the street, networks. A workshop was held in Tukums allowing the participants to exchange and to better understand each other. It is obvious that the target is not exactly the same in all EU countries. Nevertheless, there are obvious common points: for instance the age ó they are youngsters (from 13 to 30), they are living on the street, sometimes in shelters or in squats /slums (with families); they are also outsiders of the society.  

We have decided to deepen our understanding of the main concepts and to collect the best practices from each country. In Tukums, all partners presented their activities, the social context of the countries and tried to integrate the recent development of the financial crisis in their reflexion. 

NEXT MEETING

The next step will be in May. We'll have our second meeting in Rzeszow, Poland. We plan to process the joint analysis of the results of the comparative study and good practice through the PEST and SWOT tools, to visit  a social support structure (with possible interaction between social workers and ISPAW Partners), to present and to discuss  various dissemination tools, and to prepare future projects. 

DISCLAIMER: This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein