Eliminating Social Exclusion

Often, parents of children with special needs choose not to venture anywhere. They frequently avoid travels since they are unaware of how to get the accommodations they need during the journey. On the other hand, companies that offer travel services, especially micro-companies, don’t know the needs of families with children with special needs.The principal objective of the EliSE project is supporting parents of children with behavioral disturbs realizing an educational parent-training module for “fair traveling” in European countries and an educational toolkit. Accordingly, the primary target group of this project is represented by social educators that will be trained on how to train parents of children with behavioral disturbs (parent-training).For this purpose, our project aims at improving the competence of educators in the field of special education as well as to teach them on the use of parent-training techniques.The other target groups involved in the EliSE project are the families of children with special needs, parents' associations, social services, NGOs involved in special need education, and companies that deliver travel services.Target groups’ representatives are involved in the project’s activities through training activities, meetings, seminars, and online discussions. One short-term learning event will be organized involving selected persons from the target groups (social educators and parents) and experts.The Consortium is formed of six partners from six different countries, Latvia, Italy, Poland, Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey.The EliSE project will provide partners with the opportunity to share investigations conducted separately in the field of special need education as well as to confront ideas, practices, and methods in the sector of social integration. Thanks to this project, they will increase their capacity to operate at a transnational level.This project foresees four IOs:1. IO1: Model representing the various aspects which characterize travels of families with children affected by behavioral disturbs (months 1-6)2. IO2: Online collaborative learning infrastructure (months 3-11)3. IO3: Blended learning module for educators: “Supporting families with children affected by behavioral disturbs” •Design of the module (months 6-8) •Implementation of the module (months 7-11) •Pilots (month 12-18)4. IO4: Toolkit for Fair Traveling and Policy recommendations (months 17-24)The project's impact includes:•more active participation in society (social educators, parents, children, and stakeholders);•improved competences, linked to professional profiles (social educators); •better understanding of practices in education and training (educational institutions);•more strategic and integrated use of ICTs and open educational resources (OER) in education and training (for educators, parents, and educational institutions); •reinforced interaction between practice, research, and policy (educators, Parents’ Associations, Policymakers, Travel services companies).Finally, our project can contribute to support migration of families with children with special needs offering them information on childcare inclusive settlements and guidance.