Include3 - Pathways towards Inclusion

Include3 - Pathways towards Inclusion

Context

Project "include3" - Transitions from Sheltered Employment for People with Intellectual Disabilities into the Regular Labour Market: Identification, Dissemination and Implementation of Good Practice in Europe - is willing to fulfill the objectives as they are set out in various countries Social Codes, for instance:

  • to facilitate and support the transition into the regular labour market,
  • vocational training provided in workshops have to be attuned more closely to labour market needs and create sustaining connections between individual vocational training and concrete employment opportunities outside the workshops.

Research evidence shows that such employment is highly beneficial to and valued by people with intellectual disabilities in terms of social connectedness, self-determination, recognition and self-esteem.

Career guidance and counselling (CGC) plays a pivotal role in this process in that CGC professionals as inclusion experts working with or for workshops need to create and sustain such connections. They also must help to ensure that vocational training is individually tailored to fit the learning needs, capabilities and aspirations of the person with intellectual disability on the one hand and labour market needs and opportunities (including available support) on the other.

The project "include3" will, in an inclusive and co-productive process, develop resources and a participative curriculum in which CGC professionals work with people with intellectual disabilities, employers and the vocational education and training (VET) professionals in the workshops to create pathways from targeted training into sustainable and decent work in regular employment relations. The central mechanism will be that through this process VET will be re-orientated in an individualised manner so as to prepare for concrete labour market opportunities.

Project period: 2022.09.01- 2025.08.31

Project No.: 2022-1-DE02-KA220-VET-000088595

„Erasmus+“ programme: KA220-VET - Cooperation partnerships in vocational education and training

Terget groups:

  • Direct target groups: inclusion specialists and people with intellectual disabilities
  • Indirect target groups: students, teachers, professors

“include3” objectives:

  • Creating guidelines and practical and educational resources based on and expanding good practice for new ways of connecting labour market needs and opportunities and VET in sheltered workshops to allow for the personalisation of individual training units towards concrete labour market opportunities.
  • Developing a curriculum for the method “Include³” through which CGC professionals working in or for sheltered workshop engage in an inclusive learning process with people with intellectual disabilities, employers and the workshop’s VET specialists to connect labour market opportunities and needs on the one hand, and individual learning needs, capabilities and aspirations on the others. In this method, such connections are then used to personalise VET in the sheltered workshop so that a tight fit between VET and labour market needs and opportunities is achieved.
  • Implementing this method in three workshops in three countries. Wider implementation will be facilitate through the production of introductory material for course leaders and participants.
  • Setting up and maintaining an interactive web portal through which all the project’s products and results are available in an accessible and easy-to-use way, containing all resources produced by the project. The web portal will serve as a one-stop shop supporting the implementation of the curriculum. It will also serve as a source for supporting better integration of sheltered VET and labour market access. By featuring a blog and linking to a social media presence the web portal will also serve as a co-developmental tool, feeding views and assessments of multiple actors back into the project’s progress.

Results:

Building on good practice in Europe

  • A praxis-oriented report on good practices.
  • Resources for the promotion of good practice targeted at a variety of audiences (e.g. employers, sheltered workshops etc.).
  • Policy documents for three categories of local decision makers (in sheltered workshops VET, career counselling, and business) 
  • Organized six focus groups in three countries 
  • Report on the focus groups with particular attention to the implications for developing the Include³ method of informing sheltered VET through CGC further.
  • Guidelines for method development, outlining the principles which the method has to follow and defining standards the process is to be measured by and prospective outcomes to be achieved.
  • Three regional community-engagement/multiplier events (CY, SI and one joint BE/DE)
  • A curriculum for collaborative inclusive learning the Include³ method that will equip CGC professionals with all necessary skills and capabilites to organise inclusive counselling that connects sheltered VET and the labour market. The curriculum will cross-reference products from Result1 and Result2. Additional material will be developed as necessary to support the learning process.
  • An evaluation report which will be used to improve the curriculum and to inform and the tools for implementation. As the curriculum is highly practice-oriented and anticipates/enacts the application of the Include³ method, practical experiences will be generated that will processe to generate case-study format materials.
  • Implementation guidelines and a self-learning module that puts trainer into a position to deliver the curriculum in a confident and effective way. This module will utilise the materials generated in the pilots.
  • Digital Infrastructure

Project partners:

  • University of Applied Labour Studies of the Federal Employment Agency (HdBA) (Germany)
  • VHS Bildungsinstitut VoG (Belgija)
  • OZARA (Slovenia)
  • SYNTHESIS Center for Research and Education (Cyprus)
  • VšĮ "eMundus" (Lithuania)

Project website: https://include3.eu/

Project social networks

 https://www.facebook.com/pathways.towards.inclusion

https://www.instagram.com/include3project/

https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/include3-project/