Opti-Work

Strategies for Inclusion - Coordinated Approaches for Quality Employment

27/02/2006
Strategies for Inclusion consisted of ten organisations from ten countries, an evaluator and a Norwegian network with seven partners (including the coordinating organisation). The partner organisations are non-governmental organisations (NGOs), public authorities, research institutes and social partner organisations. The partners are working with different target groups: immigrants, long-term unemployed, potential drop outs, early school leavers without formal qualifications, women on low incomes and people with disabilities and health problems.

The partnership agreed to focus on inclusion through work and underlined the findings of the European Social Policy Agenda, which describes unemployment as the single most important reason for poverty. A job is also seen as the best safeguard against social exclusion by most Member States in their National Action Plans against Poverty and Social Exclusion (NAPs/incl). Unemployment increases the risk of poverty in all countries.

The work of the partnership was based on the following issues:

• Social inclusion is described as a multi-level and multi-facetted concept with a strong link to employment.
• Employment covers paid full-time and part-time employment as well as self-employment.
• Support structures need a coordinated approach to be successful.
• National and transnational exchange is necessary to develop models for successful coordination.

Strategies for Inclusion was working with the following objectives:

• To analyse good practice examples and describe their relevance for inclusion pathways;
• To identify important elements in the inclusion pathways and illustrate them through case stories;
• To describe examples for coordination within pathways to employment and
• To link these outcomes to regional/national programmes and European social policies.

The partnership identified twenty factors for success with regard to inclusion pathways, and these are described and illustrated in Handbook 2. They are linked to the 5-stage process, which is a guideline for an inclusion pathway, as described in Handbook 1 and 2. The final conference (September 2005) provided opportunities to compare and discuss the experience and findings collected by Strategies for Inclusion. The conclusions are documented and published in Handbook 3.
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[File type: pdf] Handbook 1 [0.00 b]
[File type: pdf] Handbook 2 [0.00 b]
[File type: pdf] Handbook 3 [0.00 b]

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