European Skills Competition for people with a labour disability Erasmus Project

Project Title

European Skills Competition for people with a labour disability

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: International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; Access for disadvantaged; Inclusion – equity

Project Summary

The OBJECTIVE of the project is to share good practice among (new) partners in the establishment of sustainable and mutual beneficial relations between people with a labour disability and small and medium enterprises (SME’s). The focus is on WORK BASED LEARNING; This includes workplace experience for the participants as for example the training on hard skills like knowledge on the job as well as soft skills like team work, flexibility, stress reliance, creativity etc. This project will increase the experience of people with a labour disability on the labour market demand. The project will be executed in cooperation with social partners as supplier of the participants and as local stakeholders involved in the project. So, the people with a labour disability will no longer be judged on their disability but on their competences. The main purpose is to increase the employability of this target group by a smoother and more effective move to work transition. A partnership has run a successful project in the Erasmus + called ‘Para-Skills-Competition’ with 6 EU countries in 5 professions (job types: Green Jobs, Hospitality & catering, Electro, ICT and Health & care). They disseminated the results among stakeholders among Europe. Now these stakeholders are so interested that they want to share the good practice by education among the methodology and executing pilots. This will have a great impact all over Europe. The idea is to couple the partners from the first project to a ‘buddy’ country (new introduced in the project) and transfer the knowledge (methodology) and repeat (partly) what has been performed (National and European Skills Competition), which will be described in the application. This project connects to the broader mission of the EU that inclusion and diversity are milestones of an advanced and fair society.

In many countries, organisations need to comply with established quotas and must employ people with a disability. In the Netherlands for example, the Participation Law is introduced in 2015, but it seems to be difficult to reach the targets stated in this law (Rijksoverheid (2017) Beantwoording kamervragen over problemen participatiewet). Next to that, the Council of Europe created an Action Plan (2006-2015) to promote the rights and participation of people with disabilities in society. The EU has adopted the European Disability Strategy 2010-2020. But people with disabilities still face many difficulties in finding jobs, due to negative stereotypes, which make the labour market reluctant in employing such people. The Sheltered Workshops (SW) employ people with disabilities and are responsible for the development and guidance of disabled people into the general labour market. The SW need additional support from the society in this task. The SKILLS+ project supports the goals of these political priorities, and addresses some of the key issues leading to what is, in effect, an open discrimination.
To realize this, we want to, again, support the SW, the employers, and peer employees in their challenge to create an inclusive society and therefor it is necessary:
1. to improve the knowledge and basic skills training of disabled people and provide them with the skills to enter the open labour market; skill assessment must become fully transparent by use of a INGOTS certificate, which is awarded by ECVET to allow flexibility on the job. People with a labour disability have many skills, but are often poorly certified or not certified at all, due to early school leaving or other social and medical reasons. This enlarges the gap with the labour market, whereas ECVET-compliant and EQF-referenced certification increases the chances on the labour market.
2. to increase the number of working people with a labour disability on the sheltered market by exchanging and sharing knowledge on methods and strategies on a larger scale in EU, preparing these people for the open labour market. This concerns skills training, and connecting and motivating employers.

It means, that in all new participating countries in this project, with the help of the experienced partners (1st level), there will be a National Competition in every participating country (experienced- as 1st level and buddy country as 2nd level) and 1 European Competition in one of the participating partner countries. Both including at least 150 participants in total, 1 team existing of 4 persons; 3 participants and 1 buddy. The new participating countries will be directly involved in creating the set-up of 2-5 existing job types competitions, Green Jobs, Hospitality & catering, Electro, ICT and Health & care; at least 40 job coaches/buddies (per profession/per country) will be directly involved in pedagogical advice to the work-based learning/competition process and the assessment of the participants learning outcomes; and 20-40 SME’s/Sheltered Workshops will be involved to enable the work-based learning/competition creation and implementation (incl. judging)

Project Website

https://www.skillsplus.eu

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 384624,25 Eur

Project Coordinator

Stichting Kenniscentrum Pro Work & Country: NL

Project Partners

• Euroface Consulting s.r.o.
• JKVG vzw
• Ustanova za obrazovanje odraslih Dante
• INSTITUTE OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEVELOPMENT
• Andragoski zavod Ljudska univerza Velenje
• NEVSEHIR TICARET VE SANAYI ODASI
• National Training Center