Quality Development of Employment Specialists Erasmus Project

Project Title

Quality Development of Employment Specialists

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: Inclusion – equity; Labour market issues incl. career guidance / youth unemployment; Enterprise, industry and SMEs (incl. entrepreneurship)

Project Summary

Aim
The common purpose of the partners in this project is to benefit from each other’s experience in the field of how to approach employers and network with employers. This project aims to improve the competencies ‘in networking with employers’ of employment specialists of VET-providers supporting persons with disabilities to find a job in the open labour market.

Context
As is well known by those active in the field of work and disability, the employment chances of people with disabilities are much lower than those without a disability. Also the rate of poverty is higher, partly due to this limited access to employment. Employment specialists in many countries are putting much effort in increasing the chances on work of people with a large distance to the labour market. Most employment specialists of VET-providers are professionals working as social workers, psychologists or teachers, having knowledge and experience in working with their target group, though often are lacking a proper knowledge about the business world. A better knowledge on how to network with employers and a better understanding of the employers’ perspective will help them to improve the quality of their employment services and, because of that, improve the chances for people with disabilities to enter labour market and to stay there.

Profiles of the partners
The profiles of the partners in this project consists of employment specialists of VET-providers and experts: employment specialists that work in daily practice in supporting persons with a distance into the open labour market, an expert in the field of networking with employers and an expert in inclusive employment and ‘working with the business approach’.

Outcomes
This exchange project will lead to:

A network of experts and special VET providers exchanging knowledge and experiences during the time of the project and afterwards.

A checklist of criteria to be used when looking for potentially interesting companies. The checklist supports the user to target the potentially successful companies for networking and placement of persons with disabilities.

A manual for successful networking, including:
o Techniques and methods on how to target companies
o Methods to network successfully with employers
o How to use an ‘employer-based’ approach
o Case studies of each participating country
o Do’s and don’ts to be taken into account for a specific country

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 70858,62 Eur

Project Coordinator

FlexPay BV & Country: NL

Project Partners

• Disworks
• SOPA
• Werkpad BV
• Josefsheim gGmbH
• DRUSTVO UCITELJEV GLUHIH SLOVENIJE
• Fundação afid Diferença