MALTA FEDERATION OF ORGANISATIONS PERSONS WITH DISABILITY
Enhancing Social and Economic Inclusion Through Independent Living
Starting date: 01.09.2017 – 31.08.2020
Partners: Orchardville Society Ltd (UK) , Vates-säätiö (FI) , GTB (BE) , IDRYMA PROSTASIAS APROSARMOSTON PAIDON I THEOTOKOS THEOTOKOS FOUNDATION THE (EL) , Stiftelsen Activa i Örebro län (SE)
Topics: Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) - Basic Skills; Access for Disadvantaged; Inclusion – equity
The project involved 5 participating countries across the EU and commenced in September 2017 and ended in August of 2020. The objective of this initiative was to create a set of modules which will assist persons with an intellectual disability to engage in independent living. This was achieved by focusing on the current need to enhance communication, literacy and numeracy skills of persons with an intellectual disability so that they will have the means to be fully integrated within the social and economic national frameworks and also to be able to realize their inherent rights for independent living.
By means of this project we created 3 Modules which focused on improving the communicative, literacy and numeracy skills for persons of an intellectual disability (i) living on their own; (ii) living with immediate or extended families; and (iii) living in residential/communal homes. The developed Modules reflected the different needs of the mentioned categories of this project's target group.
The activities of this project were the following:
1) Research
2) Development of Modules
3) Pilot Activities
4) Multiplier Event
Many researchers have shown that persons with an intellectual disability are very vulnerable and more likely to have a denser propensity per capita to be listed as low skilled or low qualified adults in a country's demographic employment analysis. However, no research to date had professionally and methodically analysed what type of services and subsidies - be they regional, national, transnational or indeed offered by civil society pressure groups - were presently available throughout the various EU countries for this population grouping. Thus, before the development of each Module, this project constituted a research study (encompassing all the EU countries) which sought to list and catalogue available subsidies, programmes and incentives in this field for the intellectually disabled. The research also seeked to establish if such available opportunities were being maximised by the grouping in question and, if not, why there were such shortfalls in the respective jurisdictions which were monitored. Additionally, this research underlined harmonious and quasi-identical initiatives in this sector evident in the various EU countries and highlighted initiatives and regulations which were available in some jurisdictions but not available in all the EU jurisdictions.
Enhancing our target group's communication and other skills was seen in the context of providing this group with the necessary tools for integration within society and for stratification betterment of the individuals in question. The project also segmented the various groupings related to persons with intellectual disabilities in order to fully pinpoint the specific needs of the target groups.
Following the completion of each Module, each participating organisation provided training to 20 person with an intellectual disability by using the methodology that had been included in the particular Module. By means of this system the participating organisations tested the Modules and at the same time provided training to a total of 360 individual by the end of same project.
The Modules can be found on this website under LincLife Modules.
