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Description
The project will focus on creating the position of an advocacy worker among families caring for a child or an adult with a disability - mental disability or PAS, living in the Jeseník Region. The parent will receive training in advocacy work and will have access to professional support. His/her job will be to depopulate, mapping the population in a given place. On the basis of a developed research instrument (questionnaire or in-depth interviews), data collection on the needs of caring families will be carried out. These will then be used to inform the advocacy strategy that will be the output of the project.
Summary of project results
The work of the advocacy worker proved to be very problematic as she rather passively floated through the project and did not feel responsible for it at all compared to the original ideas. Unfortunately, everything started to manifest itself very soon after the launch of the project. E.g. absolute unwillingness to write a diary, very problematic work with the Handbook, inability to abstract any conclusions. The planning of the in-depth interviews dragged on extremely long, without constant support that drastically exceeded the normal standard of our work, aimed at supporting self-management rather than constantly checking things, things would not have happened. After the interviews were conducted, transcripts had to be made in a timely manner and these further analysed. The worker took the transcripts under her wing but did not deliver them in the proper time or quality. The resources of three other people had to be brought into the matter. The transcripts and analysis alone required about 130 hours of work, which we also had no idea about beforehand. After that, things were pretty much on track, but the creation of the advocacy strategy was more the work of the project coordinator (a volunteer) and the advocacy expert, an expert. Maybe we have hit the intellectual capacity of the advocacy worker here. The fact that the project went according to the original plan is great news. The roundtable and the conference were successful. The in-depth conversations moved us a lot. The advocacy strategy also makes sense and advocacy work has become a pillar of our activities.
A1 selection and training of an advocacy worker - a mother who has been working with the organization for a long time was selected, familiarization with the Handbook of the Seemingly Helpless, consultation with Š. Drahokoupil, two experts were contracted to support the advocacy worker, two courses were purchased to support skills applicable to AP
A2 depistige - within the field and the contacts we have, a parameter was set for the selection of families - residence and age of the child, 3 categories were set and three families were selected in each category, they were contacted by phone if they agree to participate in the project
A3 data collection and roundtable - in-depth interviews were conducted in the families, which were then transcribed and processed in dovetail, a roundtable was held with the interviewed families and representatives of other families, where the results were presented, the problem was formulated and a problem tree was constructed
A4 development of an advocacy strategy - all activities served to gather the knowledge and skills needed to develop an advocacy strategy, which started to be written after the roundtable, once the problem was formulated
A5 final conference - all involved parents were invited as well as a number of local stakeholders, the progress of the project and its purpose was presented
A6 diary - the worker was to keep a diary throughout the duration of the project, reflecting on her progress through the project, both factually and e.g. emotionally, providing reflection
The impact is primarily evident in the strengthening of the ability of families to articulate their needs and ensure that they are met. A secondary effect is the finding
that the unavailability of services for our families only reflects the overall unavailability of services in the region. The situation of our families cannot be addressed
without regard for others. We need to look at the overall availability of services and good living conditions for all. Whether we have actually been able to make a
difference will become apparent within a year or two, which is the timeframe of the stated goals of the AS. However, if our goal of creating the AU, the goal has been
achieved. The project has therefore developed the competences of one mother, but has had a great impact on all those involved, who have been activated and made
to look at the situation with different eyes. We defined the problem, the ways to fix it, we showed who the key people were and set out ways to influence them.