"""Encouraging independent living of persons with disabilities through empowerment of their parents and guardians"""

<< Background >>How would we feel if we were not allowed to decide what and when to eat, at what time to leave the house, or when to meet friends? We make these decisions all the time, and take for granted that we do so ourselves. Persons with disabilities (PWD) who live in institutions do not share this freedom. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities commits both the EU and all of its Member States to realising the right of PWD to live independently in the community – which includes achieving deinstitutionalisation for those residing in institutional settings. In Europe, still, residential facilities represent the most common accommodation for PWD when they lose their family members caregivers.When talking about independent living of people with disabilities we cannot not consider their families and parents/guardians. Many times, most of the obstacles we find while working with people with disabilities are not about “they cannot do/achieve some activities or results”, but it’s because their parent’s think they are not able or they support them too much despite the achievement of a concrete “project for their lives”.<< Objectives >>Our project answers to the needs defined and aims to empower parents, guardians, caregivers and adult educators for providing individualised support to persons with disability for their independent living.Project objectives:1.Empower parents and guardians for the independent living of young adults with disabilities through development of inspiring, innovative and up-to-date handbook, as well as the intensive course mentorship.2.Empower our adult educators and improve knowledge management of our organisations in theory and practice for building competences of educators for independent living of (young) adults with disabilities, through innovative curriculum for educators’ training and useful toolkit with workshops for beneficiaries.3.Share project results, exchange good practices on local/national level, as well as further develop quality strategic partnership among partners from 4 European countries with different realities in regards to opportunities available for adults with disabilities.<< Implementation >>- 2 transnational partnership meetings in IT and RS + monthly online meetings- WP2 - Intellectual outputs: O1 Handbook and O2 Intensive Mentorship Course Methodology and its piloting - targeting parents/guardians of PWD; - WP3 - Outpits: O3 Toolkit and O4 Curriculum for raising competences of adult educators in the topic of empowering parents/guardians in endeavours for independent living of (young) adults with disability; with respective testing activities- 4 Local trainings of trainers- 4 multiplier events<< Results >>- O1 Handbook on independent living of persons with disabilities (PWD)- O2 Intensive Mentorship Course of parents and PWDs together - 12 families involved in 2 piloting mentorship courses- O3 Toolkit for adult educators with workshops and activities to use in their direct work with parents/guardians of PWD- 24 parents/guardians involved in local testing workshops of the O3 Toolkit- O4 Curriculum “Training of adult educators on how to support, educate and mentor parents/guardians of PWD for independent living of theirs”- 34 trainers trainers - 136 multipliers on our events