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Description
This project will support 50 women with intellectual disabilities, mental illness, or severe social problems, who are currently engaged in mechanisms for supported employment or training, and the project now aims to respond to other additional needs, including financial management, support for specific legal issues; support in access to administrative services; healthy nutrition; parenting; home management; prevention of domestic violence; raising awareness of gender equality; improvement of self-esteem; maintenance and retention of jobs. The project aims to support these women in structuring their personal, household, and financial lives, thus contributing to their social integration in the community.
Summary of project results
The project aims to support a group of 50 identified women with mental disabilities, mental illness or serious social problems who have turned to ASSOL for support in accessing employment. Some of them have already had specific vocational training for people with this profile and support for integration during their vocational training (for around 2 years), which has allowed them not only to gain work skills but also to be effectively integrated into employment measures, having, at the time of this project application, a work contract with companies in their area of residence. This was a crucial first step towards autonomy. Both vocational training and the employment support resource centre are typical support measures funded by Portuguese government. However, this support does not take into account the needs that these people feel in the following period when they have to organise themselves financially with a salary that they now receive. And this completely jeopardises all the work done to get these women into work. In other words, receiving a salary but not knowing how to manage it; not using it for priority purposes, handing it over to their partners under pressure, among other issues, subverts the central objective of the intervention with these women - full integration/ autonomisation - economic condition. This project covers this gap in the integration process for this group of vulnerable women.
In the initial phase of the project, the recording and evaluation instruments were created and the beneficiaries of the project were enrolled, selected and characterised, defining with each of them the respective intervention plan and the areas to be worked on, scheduling the sessions and defining priorities.
The satisfaction questionnaire (1st stage) was implemented in order to be able to compare the results after the project had been implemented.
Personalised work began with each of them, namely: training for proper household management, supporting the organisation and logistics of their home in its natural context, from cleaning and sanitising spaces, time management taking into account professional and other demands, washing and treating clothes, organising shopping taking into account quality/price criteria; training for proper financial management - supporting the profitability of their salary by defining priority and secondary expenses; helping to create savings funds; planning shopping and managing weekly menus taking into account the resources available and the principles of healthy eating; raising awareness and informing about gender equality, sharing rights and duties with the other members of the household, specifically the partner, empowering them; developing personal skills, such as self-esteem, assuming oneself as a being with rights, regardless of one''s limitations; support in organising routines with their minor children (where they exist), assertiveness and positive parenting, encouraging contact with the school; support in resolving legal issues according to each person''s situation.
Throughout the project, the project team liaised with the various stakeholders involved in these people''s lives (people from their family and relationship system, friends, neighbours, significant others, technicians from community services, local authorities) in order to reflect on and network the best solutions and strategies for each case,
The activities took place in the natural contexts of each participant, at home, at work, in the supermarket, at the gym, in local services (Post Office, Banks, Social Security, Schools, Health Centre, Finance, local authorities and others, as planned for the intervention.
Group activities/sessions were also organised; workshops (with the collaboration of services, namely healthy eating and financial literacy); outings and social weekends, cultural and leisure activities, participation in the national meeting of workers with disabilities.
Publicity and dissemination activities took place throughout the project, at CLAS, at EAPN, at congresses and seminars, and at federations that support disabled people.
As part of the training component, ASSOL carried out an Organisational Diagnosis in collaboration with the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences.
In terms of capacity building, ASSOL carried out an Organisational Diagnosis in collaboration with the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of the University of Coimbra, covering the following topics: Value creation model; Impact assessment; Growth level; Strategy; Partnerships; Marketing, communication and fundraising; Structure, governance and leadership; Human resources; Financial management, control and risk; Operations management; Information technology.
The Action Plan resulting from this diagnosis will have been implemented during 2024, so not all the actions have been finalised to date. Some of the actions have already been carried out, such as: the application of questionnaires to employees to find out their perception of decent work, knowledge sharing, perceived stress and life satisfaction; with regard to Impact Assessment, 9 benchmarking visits to ASSOL in 2023 were highlighted; for Growth sustained by Continuous Improvement, an action was held for all ASSOL employees on issues of social innovation / energy sustainability; with regard to Partnerships, 485 were signed in 2023 and 100% of these intend to maintain the collaboration protocol in 2024. Each partnership was given a flyer summarising ASSOL''s 2023 results.
The aim of the project was to promote the autonomy of women with intellectual disabilities, mental illness or serious social problems (it reached 48 women and 3 men) through individualised support in the area of financial management, access to administrative services, healthy eating, parenting, domestic management, prevention of domestic violence, raising awareness of gender equality, improving self-esteem and maintaining and retaining jobs.
Each beneficiary received at least 25 hours of individual support plus group sessions such as workshops with the collaboration of services and cultural and leisure activities, with the average number of hours of support per person being 33.5.
The diagnostic and final evaluation revealed progress in the 51 people involved.
The project has been recognised locally and nationally, having been mentioned as a good practice in the EBOOK of EAPN - European Anti-Poverty Network and, as such, one of the municipalities has offered to continue funding the project.