Event

Youth Working Group

In recent years EPR members have increasingly expressed interest collaborating in the area of working with young people with disabilities. The joint work started off in December 2020 at the National Awareness Raising Event (NARE) in Germany where a number of EPR members presented their services and programmes for young people with disabilities. In addition, EPR is currently leading 2 Erasmus+ projects with members focused on young people, Jump2Job and TransitAction.

On 17 May and 30 June 2021, two meetings were organised to start off a thematically focused exchange and mutual learning on services for young people with disabilities. The participants identified a number of topics of common interest: 1) Adaptation of services to new demands in the labour market for young people with a disability or mental health issues and to their specific needs; 2) Improvement of the employability of young people with a disability or mental health issues, including by addressing motivational issues for them to learn; 3) How to effectively accompany and support a shift to hybrid models of learning, teaching and training; 4) Inclusive education – successful models to learn from; 5) Organisation of trans-national exchanges for young people with a disability or mental health issues. In the second meeting, the thematic exchange focused on “Transition Management” for young people with disability (YPWD) from school and training into employment.

The first meeting in 2022 was held on 31 March (on Zoom). It thematically focused on “inclusive education”. Participants looked at the preconditions to realise inclusive education and at which adaptations to the services EPR members are offering in child and youth welfare are needed, how this can be best done, and which problems exist. Participants also were informed on the main activities planned in the European Year 2022 on Youth relevant for them as social service providers.

The second meeting – organised on 23 June face-to-face in Brussels, but with an additional option to participate online via Zoom –was mainly built around the topic “Transitions from education and training into employment for YPWD”. A draft of the EPR report was presented and good practises presented and discussed. Additionally, recent developments regarding the main EU policy frameworks and funds relevant for child and youth welfare and/or youth policy was presented and together assessed for their relevance for the policy and practical work of EPR members.

Participants were asked to fill in the registration form by 20 June 14.00 CEST at the latest.

This event was for EPR members only.