Resilience building techniques for professionals working with vulnerable groups Erasmus Project

Project Title

Resilience building techniques for professionals working with vulnerable groups

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 vocational education and training

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; Health and wellbeing; Inclusion – equity

Project Summary

Professionals from social and health sector working with vulnerable groups have a high absenteeism. This is due to stress and burnout, leading to increasing annual public expenditure in the participating countries. They are overwhelmed partly because they lack efficient tools to cope with stressful situations and to build resilience in themselves. Furthermore, their patients face problems originating from poverty and lack of education but also from mental health problems and cultural differences. To differentiate the effects of these factors is then a challenge.

In the RESICARE project we aimed to develop educational materials for social and health professionals that can be incorporated in the vocational education system. These materials/tools will enable them to
– better understand their relationship with their vulnerable patients (by reflecting on their patient’s and on their own cultural backgrounds, beliefs, and expectations)
– notice the differences between signs and behaviors that suggest cultural differences as opposed to mental health issues
– better understand how resilient behaviors can be manifested differently in different cultures/subcultures
– learn how to use a wide range of activities (based on cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), art therapy, cognitive neuroscience and on the combination of these approaches) to better cope with stressful situations, to build resilience in themselves and to avoid burn-out

Our primary target groups were
– People working in the helping professions (social workers, health professionals)
– Social and health profession students (future professionals).
– Institutions, organizations providing continuous / initial education for health and social professionals
Our secondary target group consisted of the vulnerable patients of helping professionals.

Intended impact on the target groups:
By getting familiar with these new approaches and techniques, social workers and health professionals can better cope with the stress inherent in their work and can help their patients more efficiently. In the long term this can lead to increased self-efficacy and higher job satisfaction. Institutions training social workers and health professionals will get acquainted with new methods that they can incorporate in their own pedagogical work.

To reach our goals and achieve the intended impact we developed 4 Intellectual Outputs:
– the Foundation Bricks (O1), that explains the main concepts (mental health, resilience, culture) and their intersections from both theoretical and practical viewpoints
– the Manual of Critical Incidents (O2) that explains how the interpretation of problem situations between health professionals and their patients are shaped by cultural background, by one’s beliefs and expectations, and how to differentiate the many possible factors (e.g., culture, mental health issues) behind problem behaviors
– the Building resilience in social workers and health professionals toolkit (O3) that will equip these target groups with evidence based methods to better cope with stressful situations, to build resilience and to prevent burn-out
– the RESICARE Open Educational Resource (O4) will ensure that the developed results, corresponding background materials and a series of video lessons are freely available to a wide audience for years after the project ends.

We involved 616 social workers and health professionals and 79 vulnerable people directly to test our newly developed materials and we reached more than 245.060 secondary beneficiaries through project dissemination, exploitation, and transferability.

The durability of the project is assured by the materials’ long-term availability on the RESICARE website and on EU on-line platforms and also by offering future workshops and courses built around these results.

Project Website

http://resicareproject.eu

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 237843,68 Eur

Project Coordinator

ELAN INTERCULTUREL & Country: FR

Project Partners

• Associació Animacción España / Associació Animacción Arteterapia
• Association Institut Parmentier
• Képes Alapítvány – a szociális és érzelmi készségfejlesztésért