BUILDING BRIDGES: PROMOTING SOCIAL INCLUSION AND WELLBEING FOR FAMILIES OF CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL NEEDS Erasmus Project

Project Title

BUILDING BRIDGES: PROMOTING SOCIAL INCLUSION AND WELLBEING FOR FAMILIES OF CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL NEEDS

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 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Inclusion – equity; Health and wellbeing; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

The project entitled Building Bridges: Promoting Social Inclusion and Wellbeing for Families of Children with Special Needs (PSI_WELL) proposed an innovative approach aimed to facilitate social inclusion and wellbeing for families confronting with disabled children through adult education for parents. The project has been addressing to the specific needs of families parenting children with special needs (SN) and it was designed to help parents to improve their coping strategies and to enhance their parenting skills in order to foster their social inclusion and wellbeing. The first aim of our project was to assess the wellbeing, stress related factors and couple relationship of parents of children with special needs. The second aim was to enhance personal resources (such as individual coping, emotion regulation), family resources (such as dyadic coping, family resilience) and social support for parents of a child with special needs through development, implementing and validating a psycho-educational and social intervention program. The general aim of the project was promoting social inclusion, equity and wellbeing for risk families in Europe through an intervention program for parents of children with special needs. This was reached through objectives: (1) Diagnose the level of social inclusion, stress and wellbeing of 1259 families parenting children with special needs through a cross-sectional and cross-national research; (2) Developing a psycho-educational & social intervention program for fostering wellbeing for families of children with SN; (3) Validating the psycho-educational &social intervention program for risk families through the implementation with 250 parents from European countries of partnership; (4) Raising the awareness of the communities regarding the specific needs for social inclusion of risk families and disadvantaged parents of children with special needs through conducting an information campaign; (5) Developing a psycho-educational kit comprising two working tools for trainers specialized in working with disadvantaged parents by the end of the project; (6) Improving parenting skills and parent-child relationships through developing an integrative handbook for parents by the end of the project. The target group comprised approximately 230 parents from six European countries who were involved in training activities and social network in order to enhance their personal and parental skills for a better social inclusion. The activities described specific interventions such as a cross-national research on social inclusion, stress and wellbeing of families of children with SN to diagnose the level of stress and wellbeing of parents and the implications for adult education; designing and validating of a Psycho-Educational &Social Intervention (PESI) Program for enhancing social inclusion and wellbeing of families of children with special needs; developing specific and comprehensive tools to sustain the intervention program (such as: a handbook for parents of children with special needs; a psycho-educational kit for social-emotional learning training for parents of children with SN, comprising the trainer’s manual and the trainee’s workbook), developing and implementing a training course for trainers; delivering the training program for parents; creating a network of support groups for parents of children with special needs in order to facilitate knowledge and experiences sharing, fostering social inclusion as well; dissemination of project’s activities and results; sharing the project’s deliverables through website, workshops, symposium, conferences. The expected impact on target groups was twofold: on the one hand we could notice a personal development process and on the other hand the parents could acquire specific parenting skills (the participating parents of children with SN had the opportunity to analyze their lives, to feel how it is to be cared of and to become more resilient and enabled to practice different parenting strategies in order to respond exactly to their children growing and development needs; they overcame the social exclusion being part of a support network and becoming active involved in the process of raising and supporting their own children with SN) The community involved in the multiplier events is more sensitive to the specific needs of families with children with SN and the university is recognized as an important resource for quality knowledge and experience (provider of an evidence-based program). At the national and international level the project contributed to the raising the awareness through presentations at conferences and also through the project presentation done at the European Parliament by our Portuguese partner. The research conducted within the project drew some implications for family’s life within social environment and it will propose some solutions for intervention to enhance the life quality of these families and their social inclusion.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 190285 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSITATEA STEFAN CEL MARE DIN SUCEAVA & Country: RO

Project Partners

• BOGAZICI UNIVERSITESI
• UNIVERSIDAD DE LLEIDA
• KLAIPEDOS UNIVERSITETAS
• INSTITUTO POLITECNICO DE BRAGANCA
• SVEUCILISTE U ZAGREBU EDUKACIJSKO-REHABILITACIJSKI FAKULTET