Happy and safe in the Community Erasmus Project

Project Title

Happy and safe in the Community

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for adult education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Romas and/or other minorities; Health and wellbeing

Project Summary

In Europe, every year, child maltreatment leads to the premature death of 852 children under 15 years (figure that can be underestimated). The European report on preventing child maltreatment (2013) suggests that in Europe “18 million children suffer from sexual abuse, 44 million from physical abuse and 55 million from mental abuse.” Moreover, “analyses of community surveys from Europe and around the world have confirmed the extent of abuse in the community. Child maltreatment is also a leading cause of health inequality, it worsens inequality and perpetuates social injustice (WHO, 2013). Although child maltreatment responses are a priority in most European countries, the responses are failing and cases of child maltreatment in Europe are increasing, requiring greater focus on prevention (Ibid. 2013). Some of the risk factors for child maltreatment are: having parents or caregivers experiencing financial difficulties; and community & societal factors like inadequate housing or services/institutions to support families and institutions; high levels of unemployment/poverty; inadequate policies and programmes to prevent child maltreatment; social and cultural norms that promote/glorify violence towards others; among others (WHO).

Co-Happiness project aims to be a multidisciplinary project to prevent child abuse and maltreatment, by:
Developing of a multidisciplinary prevention project to meet the challenge of child abuse and maltreatment, involving different stakeholders such as schools, justice, local authorities, local municipalities, practitioners and non governmental organisations.
Reducing child abuse, maltreatment, and neglect by developing new steps to empower community (mainly problematic neighbourhoods) to better recognise the first signs of child abuse and maltreatment so that they can report the cases, and the cases can be taken more quickly by the child protection agencies.

Setting in a research to report on social capital and collective efficacy approaches to prevent child abuse and maltreatment.
Adopting education, training and gamification approaches to activate key community actors and children to prevent, signalise and report child abuse and maltreatment situations, by awareness-raising about early signs, consequences and how to act on it preventing situations of abuse or negligence of children and young people.

Designing a Training Curricula on Child Abuse and maltreatment Prevention & Awareness and pilot with key community actors.
Developing a b-learning game to Child Abuse and maltreatment Prevention & Awareness and pilot it with children.

In order to achieve these goals, the project expects to deliver and make available to the stakeholders:

1 overview report on social capital and collective efficacy approaches to prevent child abuse and maltreatment – translated to the national language of each partner country.

1 Co-Happiness training curricula on community prevention and awareness on child abuse and maltreatment – translated to the national language of each partner country.

1 Program to prevent child abuse and maltreatment, aiming to train educators, teachers, trainers, community mentors, etc. – translated to the national language of each partner country.

1 Co-Happiness game to promote prevention and awareness on child abuse and maltreatment for children from 6-9 years old – translated to the national language of each partner country.

1 Resource Guide to community and children prevention and awareness on child abuse and maltreatment – the resource guide will enable the transferability and scalability of the Co-Happiness training and Game.

In order to validate and disseminate the products partners will also deliver:

6 pilots trainings targeting 96 community key actors in order to test the training curricula developed and improve it.

24 validation workshops, involving involving 144 experts.

6 multiplier events, that will also have the goal to disseminate the project. In total, these events will engage 72 local participants.

3 short term joint staff trainings, that will also have the goal to disseminate the project. In total these trainings will count on 54 participants.

6 open workshops during the project meetings, involving all partners organisations, in total involving 72 participants.

Is therefore expected that practitioners from based community NGO’s, governmental multi agencies, other public bodies and a wide set of stakeholders somehow connected to children’s healthy development improve their intervention effectiveness in terms of collective efficacy, and child abuse prevention and signalling.

Project Website

https://co-happiness.eu/

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 401568,34 Eur

Project Coordinator

St. Dona Daria & Country: NL

Project Partners

• KENTRO MERIMNAS OIKOGENEIAS KAI PAIDIOU
• DIAKONIA-AMMATTIKORKEAKOULU OY
• Asociatia Start pentru performanta
• Cooperatieve vereniging Pressure Line U.A.
• Inthecity Project Development B.V.
• APROXIMAR- COOPERATIVA DE SOLIDARIEDADE SOCIAL, CRL
• SAN GIUSEPPE ONLUS