Summury
Numerous researches highlight how the particular passage to adulthood expose people with intellectual disability and their families to a progressive social isolation (Kropf, Kelly 1995; Dillemburgher, McKerr 2009). In the field of intellectual disability in many European countries there is a lack of services that operate on the transition to adulthood. For this reason our aim was to involve the partner organizations active in the field of intellectual disability in a cooperative action research to locate at European level the problems faced by young adults with intellectual disability and their families. The staff of the partner organizations met each other in a series of meeting and call conferences to understand the reciprocal working method and to discuss the action research data. As a final results they built a “compass”, a set of criteria to develop innovative projects and training services for the young adults with intellectual disability and their families. The “compass” promoted the development of the daily project and training services of the partner organizations also empowering the “social and civic competences” of the families of young adults with intellectual disability and the other citizens.Rationale
Intellectual disability was a social and cultural problem for many centuries in all Europe. Reclusive institutions such as mental institutions have been the main instrument through which European society has taken on the problem of intellectual disability, reclusing, ignoring, keeping out of sight of the civilian population. Over the last 20 or 30 years, all European countries started to criticize the theory and practice of institutionalization as a result of new values and laws addressed to facilitate the integration of the disabled person into the society. An example of this new culture is the increasing attention of the European Union towards this particular issue like expressed recently in the European Disability Strategy 2010-20 that represents the objectives and reference the values of the partners organizations involved in the project. Despite these new values such as integration and protection of diversity, continues to prevail both in the theory and in practice a management and care model of disability substantially delegated to social workers and professionals rather than a participatory management of citizenry. This lack of participatory management is one of the main reasons of the dramatic problems daily experienced by the families of young adult with intellectual disability. This is confirmed by numerous studies that highlight how the transition to adulthood and the release from the compulsory school exposes these families to a progressive social isolation (Kropf and Kelly 1995; Dillemburgher and McKerr 2009). The dramatic situation is also exacerbated because there are several special need education services but in many European countries there is a lack of training services addressed to the problems of the whole family system and the social context. To confirm this trend a special survey on the perception of disability in Europe, carried out by Eurobarometer in 2001, highlights how, despite European citizens get more attention to the problem of intellectual disability, they consider very difficult the participation of people with disabilities to any type of social event as going to a theatre or to a restaurant.In this sense in 2013, the European Year of Citizens, this project expresses the desire of the partner organizations to bridge pragmatically this gap between values and reality understanding its sense and motivations. Developing an action-research we aimed to understand the problems faced by families of people with intellectual disability and take the families’ point of views. Through the action-research we built a “compass” for projects and training services for families of young adults with intellectual disability to develop the families’ social and civic skills useful to a strengthening of their social network. The action-research enabled the partner organizations to reflect on the point of view of the families who are one of the key stakeholders in the daily organizations’ activities. In a series of meetings the partners involved discussed in detail the action-research data, they shared experiences, ways of working and got in touch with the different social and cultural realities of the other European countries. The transnational mobility actions and a series of meeting between the partner allowed an intercultural exploration of the intellectual disability’s issues related to the historical and cultural specificity of each partner country. In this sense we looked at the intellectual disability like a common problem that highlight the social and civic competence of the local context of the partner organizations.
Project objectives
- Work to bridge pragmatically the gap between values of the integration and reality of the services contributing to fill the lack of participatory management of citizenry.- Activate a process of mutual learning and exchange between organizations from different European countries that conduct training projects for young adults with intellectual disability to develop their daily work.
- Realize an action research that will involve 75 families of young adults with intellectual disability to locate at European Level in the countries involved the main problems and issues daily faced by and understand possible risk factors of social isolation.
- Develop a "compass” to realize innovative projects and training services for families of young adult with intellectual disabilities aimed to develop social skills and civic competences reducing their social isolation.
- Develop a critical discussion between different stakeholders such as policy makers and organizations related to the families of young adults with intellectual disability realizing an interactive exchange platform and a series dissemination conferences of the project results.
