"The European Pillar of Social Rights has defined education, training and lifelong learning as the first priority for equal opportunities and access to the labour market. The phrasing of this priority: ""Everyone has the right to quality and inclusive education, training and life-long learning in order to maintain and acquire skills that enable them to participate fully in society and manage successfully transitions in the labour market"" shows that the European Union is considering education and lifelong learning in a holistic way, putting skills, competences and knowledge in the centre. The main emphasis of all education policy efforts in the European Union have been along the axis of inclusion. The inclusion of people with disabilities is, at the same time, a legal requirement as the EU as well as its Member States have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD). The right, responsibilities and duties of parents as the legal guardians and primary educators of their children is defined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) that is also ratified by all EU Member States even though not the EU itself. The UNCRC and the CRPD also clearly define the duties of public actors in supporting the protection of rights as well as in catering for the needs of parents and guardians. The EU primarily has a disability policy in place that also emphasised the importance of inclusion. Some of the project partners have worked together on a previous project, ELPIDA that was chosen for the Zero Award 2020 as a unique approach supporting the parents of people with intellectual disabilities (PWID), especially of older children. There was a wish and urge to continue developing tools for parents, but also to support them in the inclusion of their children. Thus the focus of this project is still on parents as a primary target group, but also focuses on the needs of parents with smaller children. The European Disability Forum, in their praise for ELPIDA also called for more support for parents in a general context where disability programmes usually focus on independent living, leaving out the most important support network from financed innovation. For this to be achieved, we are especially targeting parents of children with intellectual disablitilies (ID), but for inclusion to become a reality the secondary target group is the general parent and professional educator/social worker community. What we are using as a baseline in this projectis the needs of parents of PWID, but also general needs of other groups that PWID are to be included into. This way, ouraim is to make parents conscious of the importance of inclusion regardless of their being the parent of a PWID or not. This, in turn, will then make institutions as well as other places important in the life of children more inclusive to make a move towards universal design throughout Europe. We see a very important role for professionals in it. Thus we are also aiming at offering them role models to better understand the otherness of PWID as well as the possibilities and advantaged of their inclusion in institutions, especially schools, for their lifelong inclusion in society.Thus the first aim of the project to establish a learning community of parents of PWID to help them overcome everyday challenges and for them to become warriors of social inclusion, and the second aim is to support the inclusiveness of institutions, especially of schools to create a strong base of societal inclusion of PWID, but also of people with other disabilities. Utilining the possibilities that the digital world can offer we are aiming at providing the information material via an e-platform to make it free and accessible to all, at any time and any place.This project aims at providing parents of children with visible and non-visible disabilities (inculding behavioural difficulties) the necessary skills and knowledge in order for them to be competent and confident to provide the right support and empowerment to their children. This will have a direct positive impact on people with disabilities and will lead to better transition to adulthood, social inclusion, and better quality of life in general."

"<< Objectives >>We aim at providing the necessary knowledge to special educators to guide and accompany people with disabilities in their search for employment. Also raise awareness of the importance of inclusive employment in the business sector and, therefore, give people with intellectual disabilities the tools and conceptual and technical knowledge to seek and get a job in the labour market to, finally, connect people with intellectual disabilities to the labour market through Online Platform.<< Implementation >>There will be 3 WP in addition to WP1 ""Project management"":-WP2: Creation of the Theoretical and Educative Materials for proffesionals and labour market actors.-WP3: Creation of the INCLUJOB Toolkit for job search for people with Intellectual Disabilities.-WP4: Development of the INCLUJOB Online Platform as catalyst of all results.Each WP includes an initial face2face meeting, coordination, development activities and results promotion and dissemination.<< Results >>This project leads to 4 learning results:INCLUJOBS Manual for Special Educators as promoters of Inclusive Employment. (300 downloads + 4 courses for support org.)INCLUJOBS Handbook for Inclusive Job Employers Awareness (300 downloads + 4 courses for comanies)INCLUJOBS Toolkit for job search of People with Intellectual Disabilities (25 support org. implement)INCLUJOBS Online Platform (200 people with ID networking for employment, 16 support organisations registered, 20 companies registered)"

The implementation of differentiated educational programs for Persons With Intellectual Disabilities (PWID), as well as the quality of training for the professionals who support them, have traditionally been the main focus of policies aiming to enhance the social inclusion of PWID. Action-taking focusing on the parents' knowledge base has not received equal attention, despite the fact that it is widely recognized, that parents play a significant role in the life of their children. The ELPIDA project aimed to fill this gap by providing tailor made training to parents of PWID in order to enhance the support they provide to their children and enable them to positively influence the quality of their life. The project's overall goal was the empowerment of PWID to a better quality of life. The project concept is founded on the assumption that parental support is a key vehicle for improving the lives of persons with Intellectual Disability (ID) and on such a base set its goal to be the provision of parental support. In ELPIDA the provision of parental support takes the form of professionally developed learning resources accessible through a Learning Platform. The specific themes/topics addressed by the resources were defined through interaction between the project partners and persons with Intellectual Disability in the forms of focus group discussions and data gathering. The process concluded to a set of six thematic units which constitute the projects set of stand alone modules and address the themes of Human Rights, Communication, Stress Management, Transition to Adulthood, Sexual Health, Ageing. The drafting of the contents was driven by a learning objective perspective. The resources put in place feature multimedia elements and are supplemented with reflective questions for parents which in turn are addressed with rigorous evaluated contents. The six modules developed in Moodle can be followed/attended on a participants' preference order, each complemented with pre-post assessment tools. The set of modules and complemented features are accessible through the ELPIDA Learning Platform (http://www.elpida-project.eu/index.php/en/) which is available in seven linguistic versions (Danish, English, French, German, Greek, Norwegian, Portuguese). The Platform has been used by approximately 400 parents and the up to date results suggest acceptance by the target group it is intended for. On interest is that the Platform, to a rather high degree, is accessed through mobile phones. The concepts embedded in the project concern and the outcomes of 24 months activity context implemented, besides the wide dissemination undertaken by the partnership (conferences, events, distribution of dissemination material, communication with parents and NGOs) having reached approximately 10.000 stakeholders, have also gained the acceptance of professionals in the area of care and policy through an Event hosted in the European Parliament. The latter gave rise to interest by large Associations whose sphere of activity addresses issues on ID. The project has also been honored to be selected as an example of good practice by the European Commission that published the project's results at the April's editorial of School Education Gateway, as well as to be shortlisted for an award by the Zero Project initiative. It is of interest that the learning resources have been assessed as being appropriate for university courses in social work and nursery.The partnership attended to the above in a highly collaborative manner and attests its interest to further pursue its efforts towards enhancing the learnability potential (with state-of- the- art resources) to parents and caretakers of persons with intellectual disability.

Intellectual disability involves a series of limitations in the skills that the person learns to function in his daily life. This intellectual disability is expressed when the person developes in his environment, that is why the disability depends both on the person himself and on the barriers and obstacles around him. This project aims to create an easier and more accessible environment in the field of information and communication. Not everyone has it just as easy to read, analyze and understand. Newspapers, news, magazines, etc. are hardly accessible for people with intellectual disabilities due to aspects such as terminology, abstraction and the complexity of concepts in articles and written news. This aggravates an often existing situation of isolation and ignorance of the world around them.The project aims to encourage the interest of people with intellectual disabilities (ID) in journalism and reading the media and communication; through the creation of a methodology supported by an ICT tool for the adaptation and reading of newspaper articles, magazines and other digital information for easy reading. The adoption of this methodology will nourish the cultural baggage of people with disabilities, in addition to being a socially inclusive activity; since cognitive accessibility represents a window of opportunity and freedom for this group.Overall objective:The general objective is to guarantee the right to be informed, creating for this an innovative co-working methodology, supported by the use of ICT, and aimed at adapting current news to Easy Reading.Specific objectives:- Promote the use of the easy reading system through the adaptation of written news to facilitate its understanding by people with intellectual disabilities.- Empower people with ID through media literacy and learning techniques to adapt texts to easy reading, so that they are able to contrast information, obtain it from reliable sources and recognize 'fake news' and help other people with reading comprehension difficulties.- Create workshops to adapt news to Easy Reading (EASYNEWS methodology) in residences of people with intellectual disabilities and other organizations.- Create a digital portal of news in easy reading of free access to make reading accessible to people with intellectual disabilities.To achieve these objectives, two Intellectual Results will be developed: * Manual of Accessible Media Literacy and Adaptation of Texts to Easy Reading accessible to people with Intellectual Disabilities. * Development of the methodology and the EASYNEWS Digital Portal for the creation of workshops to adapt news to Easy Reading, based on the use of ICT. * Guide for parents of children and youth with disabilities in promoting reading habits.The work methodology to achieve these O1, O2 and O3 will be based on the active participation of the beneficiaries themselves. It will work through co-working sessions, with ID people participating in the creation of the methodology and the Digital Portal. The beneficiaries will decide how the tool will be. That will allow them to stay informed through the written press. More than 40 people with ID will directly participate in this project. These people will contribute with their ideas, their needs, and will make decisions jointly with the project technicians regarding the design of the methodology and the Digital Portal.There will also be a Learning Activity, where a total of 18 beneficiaries will learn how to implement EASYNEWS, carry out practical activities and when they return they will take the initiative in implementing EASYNEWS in their centers.By the end of the project, EASYNEWS is expected to be applied in at least 5 support centers for people with disabilities, in addition to the project's partner centers.The results of the application of EASYNEWS represent a great improvement in the abilities of people with ID and in their quality of life:- Improvement in reading and writing.- Greater interest in reading.- Knowledge in the adaptation of texts to Easy Reading- Greater interest in the world around them.- Greater media education- Improvement in social integration.- Awareness of intellectual disability.The impact on people with ID will be direct to the quality of life of people. The group and the needs and supports it needs regarding access to information would be made visible, while at the same time executing their right to be informed. In this way, they would also promote their social inclusion, being able to perform specific and valued roles, and understanding the context for making decisions, thus becoming full citizens.

SKILLS II aims to improving skills and changing lives through self-directed support. The main purpose of the disability services is to gain social inclusion and equal citizenship for persons with disabilities. Yet often persons with disabilities experience that either the support systems are not supporting individual choices, staff working in disability services do not have the needed skills to support people individually or that managers/leading social workers/community leaders lack the skills and competencies in promoting the change in their organisations. Many persons with disabilities are still forced to passively accept the services and support they are offered even if that kind of support and services are not suitable for them. Self-Directed Support is an existing mechanism for persons with disabilities to gain more control and freedom on choice in their everyday life, but it is not widely used in Europe, even though it is proven to be an efficient way for persons with disabilities and organisations to organize services in person-centered way. This is why we need cultural, social and leadership change so that persons with disabilities can have real opportunities for change in their everyday lives. The project will help people use and further develop the current self-directed support learning materials and in particular:- Help people translate and adapt them for different countries- Establish interactive e-learning modulesIn addition, and with the target of increasing demand for the primary learning on self-directed support we will work with:- Social workers who assess needs and develop support solutions- Managers in service providers who can adapt their way of working to support self-direction- System leaders who can increase the opportunity for people to use self-directed supportOur proposal is to grow and strengthen learning about self-directed support by growing the capacity of systems to offer self-directed support and the demand for self-directed support from across the communities of Europe. In particular, Europe will benefit by ensuring that learning on best-practice is shared so that the pace of change accelerates: lessons learned in one country can be shared in others; people who have solved problems in one country can encourage and support leaders in another; countries can learn from earlier efforts to avoid mistakes and make faster changes. The critical elements of learning will combine:- Self-assessment of application of human rights principles in current systems- Creation of a network of possible pilot sites for extension of self-directed support across Europe- Design of local pilot programmes for implementation of self-directed support- Intensive technical assistance and training from global experts- Local application of SKILLS materials and further development based on feedback- Establish commitment from tertiary education providers (universities and colleges)- Ongoing peer support and mentoring as groups develop their own local plans for change- More detailed mapping and tracking of progress across Europe to support lobbying and learning from best-practice- Establishing an international platform for online learning, webinars and mentoring- Strengthen European leadership network to establish European norms and policy developmentThe key element of is co-operation: self-directed support is a bigger change of ideology, leadership and a way of organising support, so the cross-sectoral co-operation is fundamental between policy makers, researchers, service providers, public authorities, NGO´s, persons with disabilities and their family members.