Integrated community services

The strategic partnership Integrated community services is developed in the context of a deficitary integrated community services approach for vulnerable youth from rural areas. Considering human resources as well as the institutional developement of public and private organisations, supplying integrated commuity services is connected with a holistic approach of social needs and an efficient corellation of them with services from multiple areas, in order to reduce duplication of services,to harmonise the community resources and create a sustainable process of reducing poverty and promote social inclusion of youth from rural areas..
The general objective of the strategic partnership consist in increasing the ability of vulnerable young people from rural areas to participate to community social life and growing the capacity to access community resources, by developing and piloting integrated community services in the partner countries.
The specific objectives set are as follows:
- To increase the quality of the integrated community service system in minimum 6 rural communities from the participating countries;
- To improve the level of specific competences needed by the practitioners and volunteers that are active in the field of community services, contributing to the development of individual answer strategies to social problems, adapted to vulnerable young people from rural areas;
- To develop a procedural compatibility regarding the evaluation of individual and community needs, by accesing resources through the community services existing in the partner countries;
- To develop a information and guidance campaign for vulnerable young persons from rural areas in the partner countries regarding the available community resources and ways to access them;
The direct target group of the project is represented by practitioners in the educational, cultural and social field such as: social workers, case managers, community nurses, mediators, counselors, educators, social pedagogues and other community services responsibles from the three participating countries. These practitioners will improve the quality of the final results of the project and will assure its sustainability, by working directly with the main beneficiaries of the project.
The main beneficiaries of the project are vulnerable young people from rural areas, people from disadvantaged groups such as people with disabilities, people at the risk of extreme poverty, elders etc. They will benefit from the activities of the project by having an improved access to community services and community resources. Furthermore, other category of beneficiaries will be volunteers and other stakeholders, by transferring the competences promoted by the project through local activities.
The reason we chose this target group consist in the insufficiency of the community services available in rural areas, as well as the lack of information distributed among the community, generated by the lack of training and supervision of the practitioners that work in the field. The needs of people to receive support in accessing these services generates a lack of practitioners to have an efficient answer for supplying qualitative services, thus being the main reason why trained volunteers are so needed in the field.
The needs the strategic partnership addresses are:
- The lack of practitioners that work in the field to answer the needs of vulnerable groups from rural areas;
- The lack of methodologies and work procedures adequate to the needs of vulnerable groups from rural areas;
- The lack of an integrated approach to the needs young people are facing;
- Reduced training programs and workshops that aim developing specific competences on practitioners that work in the field;
- The lack of integrated community services for young people from rural areas;
In order to answer this needs, we propose the following activities:
- Kickoff meeting of the partners;
- Monitoring the community services existing in the three partner countries;
- A research regarding the activities young volunteers can participate in the integrated social services existing in the three partner countries;
- Joint staff meeting,in order to identify the best methods used among the partners, as well as best activities to involve the volunteers in;
- Blended mobility of practitioners, in order to gain the competences needed for the activities to be developed in the guideline;
- Local activities in the three participating countries; piloting the activities in which volunteers can be involved in integrated community services;
- Join staff meeting, in order to develop the last form of the guidelines for practitioners on how to involve community volunteers in their work;
- Multiplier events;
- Final conference in Romania;