Guider on the current situation regarding decision making of persons with special learning needs in form of interviews with adults with id, parents, therapists and trainers is ready and available in 7 languages: English and 6 languages of the 6 partners of DECIDER consortium (Polish, Greek, Spanish, Macedonian, Lithuanian and Catalan). You can find it and download it in LIBRARY section (PUBLICATIONS).

This guider includes fundamental and useful information about current situation with supported decision making (SDM) in every partner country, description of stories (service users, parents, supporters) and comments on the stories from layer and psychologist.

The goal of this publication is a provision of knowledge to supporters of persons with special learning needs on supported decision making and its impact on quality of their life.    

DECIDER

2020-1-PL01-KA204-081965

Article for DECIDER’s kick off meeting

Title: DECIDER project has started!

Article: COVID-19 may be still here making things difficult to travel and meet but DECIDER project team from Poland, Spain, Greece, North Macedonia, and Lithuania, launched its kick-off meeting online on the 11-12 of January 2021.

What is DECIDER, you may ask. Decider is an ERASMUS+ project that aims to cover the lack of IT educational and training resources of staff working on the field of disability, on implementing Supported Decision Making (SDM) as a support service for people with disabilities aiming at the enhancement of their autonomy and Quality of life.

DECIDER’s ambition is inspired by the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) and specifically, its article 12 refers to equal recognition before the law on an equal basis with others. We plan through DECIDER to support UNCRPD to achieve its shift towards a human rights approach of legal capacity. SDM has been proven as an efficient mechanism to implement legal capacity, however, no country has reached a satisfactory level of structural implementation. There are several barriers to achieve this, including the lack of knowledge, mechanisms, and professional resources to make feasible the change of paradigm and DECIDER plans to investigate these issues and provide solutions!

DECIDER’s results will be based on the co-productive methodology which means that people with disabilities are included in the numerous activities carried out in the project to ensure greater efficacy in products and quick results.

If you are a person with a disability, a professional supporter, family member of policy maker interested on SDM then DECIDER will provide you with interesting news and tools in the following years to come!

The professionals will gain updated knowledge and implement SDM Rights-based services directly to persons with disabilities. This will lead to the shift of organisations to a supported decision-making approach service. The level of autonomy of people with disabilities will increase and they will be able to carry out decisions boosting their self-esteem and ameliorating the quality of their lives.

DECIDER will develop the following materials:

Guider on the Current situation regarding Decision Making of persons with Special Learning Needs.

• Decider’s Application to be used by professionals and people with disabilities to support their decision making
• Easy-to-read publication on Supported Decision Making for people with intellectual disabilities
• Multimedia Package on Supported Decision Making for people with disabilities, their families, and supporters
• Guidelines for professionals on the use of ICT based methodology on Supported Decision Making
• Pedagogical Piloting of all the materials by the relevant shareholders.

Last but not least, all these will be achieved through the collaboration of six expert organisations in different areas of knowledge related to the field of disability, such as IT, the provision of support services for people with intellectual disabilities, a self-help organization, and educators and trainers, both people with disabilities and support professionals. The diverse typology of profiles in partnership allows a comprehensive approach to the main objective of providing a set of innovative, ICT-based, and fully accessible educational tools that allow the implementation of decision-making methodologies supported by support systems for persons with disabilities.

The organisations are the following: PSONI (Poland), Viltis (Lithuania), Support Girona (Spain), Campus Arnau D’ Escala (Spain), AktivUM (The Republic of North Macedonia), Margarita VTC (Greece)

During the Kick-off meeting, we got to know each other better and discussed some core subject areas regarding the project. This meeting has been very fruitful as we exchanged several points of view based on our different cultural and professional backgrounds.

Despite the practical issues that emanate from the corona virus outburst, we strongly believe that this project will be implemented successfully and will contribute to the promotion of the Supported Decision Making on people with special learning needs!

DECIDER  2020-1-PL01-KA204-081965

Article for DECIDER’s Second Online TPM

Title:DECIDER’s Meeting, Website and First Output!

Article:DECIDER’s project team held their second transnational project meeting on the 2nd of June, to discuss Supported Decision Making and how it can be improved through our project. COVID-19 didn’t allow us to visit beautiful Girona in Catalonia and meet face-to-face with our hosts from SUPPORT Girona and Campus Arnau as well as all the other organizations of the consortium: PSONI (Poland), Viltis (Lithuania), AktivUM (The Republic of North Macedonia) and Margarita VTC (Greece) but our virtual meeting was very productive!

In this meeting, we made several decisions and discussed about DECIDER’s webpage and information leaflets as well as our hashtags so you can find us more easily in Social Media!

If you want to learn more about Supported Decision Making please visit us on http://decider-project.eu/ !

The highlight of the meeting though, was our first Output, a “CASE STUDY ON SUPPORTED DECISION-MAKING (SDM)”.

Material collected in this publication is based on the interviews with persons with special learning needs, their parents/guardians and supporters. Interviews were conducted by specialists representing project’s partners from Greece, Lithuania, Poland, North Macedonia, and Spain – Catalonia.

You can find and download our case study in the following link: http://decider-project.eu/publications-2/

If you have any best practices or stories to share about Supported Decision Making, please use #deciderproject hashtag and connect with us! 

On May 25th and 26th, the international meeting of the DECIDER project was held face to face in Poland. A host was PSONI from Poland and all other organizations of the consortium were present at the meeting: Support (Girona), Campus Arnau, Viltis (Lithuania), AktivUM (The Republic of North Macedonia) and Margarita VTC (Greece).

Meeting was very productive, project partners discussed Supported Decision Making and how it can be improved through our project.

The main objective of this meeting has been the second output DECIDER Application for Persons and Professionals and fifth output DECIDER – Methodology on Supported Decision-Making using ICT.

In this meeting we made several decisions and discussed about DECIDER Application as IT tool that will change the world focused on supported decision making. Teachers and persons with disability in five countries will get the unique tool which can be used during workshops on decision making and in everyday life as well.

Partners also discussed how to develop the fundamental core methodology to implement a supported decision-making service in partner organisations.

This IO will produce methodological guidelines to enable the recognition of legal capacity for persons with disabilities in different spheres of life by enabling professionals, caregivers,
and family members to identify and put into practice the core SDM process at different levels or different stages of a PWD life project or life expectations.

If you want to learn more about Supported Decision Making please visit us on http://decider-project.eu/

The European Erasmus + Programme “DECIDER – Enhancing life experiences for adults with special learning needs, trainers and parents through supported decision-making” is moving on. During this period, we are implementing with our partners the realization of the easy-to-read material. This material is addressing people with intellectual disabilities and especially those who are interested in get new skills and will be encouraged to be self-determinative in making decisions.  

ETR Brochure contains chapters like what is right, who proposes the laws for the rights, where you can find your rights. Projects partners consider that is very important in the brochure to mention part about Convention of right of persons with disability as a human rights instrument withan explicit, social development dimension.

Supported decision making (SMD) аs а part of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) is include in the brochure and provide information about decision process, gaining knowledge, taking responsibility, asking for support.

 Also, DECIDER Application is presented in the brochure.

You can download the Brochure in English, Macedonian, Polish, Spanish, Greek,  Catalan, or Lithuanian language from the Publications section.

On May 25th and 26th, the international meeting of the DECIDER project was held face to face in Poland. A host was PSONI from Poland and all other organizations of the consortium were present at the meeting: Support (Girona), Campus Arnau, Viltis (Lithuania), AktivUM (The Republic of North Macedonia) and Margarita VTC (Greece).

Meeting was very productive, project partners discussed Supported Decision Making and how it can be improved through our project.

The main objective of this meeting has been the second output DECIDER Application for Persons and Professionals and fifth output DECIDER – Methodology on Supported Decision-Making using ICT.

In this meeting we made several decisions and discussed about DECIDER Application as IT tool that will change the world focused on supported decision making. Teachers and persons with disability in five countries will get the unique tool which can be used during workshops on decision making and in everyday life as well.

Partners also discussed how to develop the fundamental core methodology to implement a supported decision-making service in partner organisations.

This IO will produce methodological guidelines to enable the recognition of legal capacity for persons with disabilities in different spheres of life by enabling professionals, caregivers,
and family members to identify and put into practice the core SDM process at different levels or different stages of a PWD life project or life expectations.

If you want to learn more about Supported Decision Making please visit us on http://decider-project.eu/

For two years the Lithuanian welfare society of persons with intellectual disability „Viltis“  together with foreign partners has been implementing the project “DECIDER: enhancing  life experiences  of adults with special learning needs, trainers and parents through supported decisin-making” under ERASMUS+ program.

This time the partners have met in the Igninus room of the Panorama Hotel in Vilnius, Lithuania in order to discuss the project’s issues and to make a plan of further project activities. The meeting lasted  for 2 days – December 15-16, 2022

A lot of material was created during the implementation of the project:

• a set of good practices on supported decision-making;
• the application for people with intellectual disability and their assistants, which facilitates making appropriate decisions in various life situations;

Easy-to-read publication on SDM;

• training materials for teachers, social workers and other people who help people with dsiability to make their decisions;
• methodology manual on supported decision-making.

The poject partners discussed the use of application,  the use of  methodology manual, the structure and content of future training.

The Spanish partner Campus Arnau D’Eskala will organize three days training in Girona. Three teachers from each country will participate in the training. The requirements for potential training participants are rather high:

• teachers must work with people with intellectual disabilities,
• have a good command of English,
• be proficient in digital technologies,
• the most important thing is the ability to transfer knowledge to persons with intellectual disability during pilot training after returning to their country.

We hope that the participants of future trainings will aquire good knowledge and  transfer  it to the persons with intellectual dsiability. Thus the created material and the tools will help them to make right decisions in their lives.

Lietuvos sutrikusio intlekto žmonių globos bendrijos „Viltis“

Informacija

From 14th till 16-th of March there was LTT in Girona – Spain. We had our meetings at the headquarters of our host a the Girona – Support organizations. The first day Ferran shown us the whole place and talk about its work. We also met the Director of Girona-Support. The training was for 18 instructors who came from each country participating in the Project. This training’s main goal was to present all the tools developed in the Project to instructors who were supposed to work directly with persons with intellectual disability. A lot of time during this meeting was devoted to Decider Application. Anka from Poland had an on-line workshop within witch all the participants had a chance to use and master this Application. On Wednesday after classes everybody had a walk guided by Sergi from Girona – Support. Sergi presented us an Old Town in Girona. After a walk we had a dinner in a restaurant. LTT Meeting was the last step before starting a piloting phase and prepared all instructors for this part of the project.

MARGARITA hosted in Athens the transnational meeting of the Erasmus+ DECIDER project.   

Professionals, advocates and people with intellectual disabilities from Aktivum (North Macedonia), Psoni (Poland), Viltis (Lithuania), SUPPORT Girona and Campus Arnau (Spain-Catalonia) gathered to discuss this topic and learn how to use the DECIDER training toolkit.   

We had together two full days with presentations, evaluations, games and discussions!

• We learned about the guide of DECIDER. A research report that collected SDM stories from people with disabilities, families and supporters.
• We used Easy To Read manual on the rights of people with disabilities and SDM services
• We show how DECIDER app works and what it can offer in understanding the impact of choices and options in decision making.
• We navigated in DECIDER’s webpage and multimedia tool and we also played the DECDER Labyrinth online game!
• The meeting finished with an interactive game in which all the participants helped a member of DECIDER’s team reach his own decision! This helped us understand how complex decision making can be, understand the impact of our choices and find the balance between what we want and what we need to do.

The meeting took place at the Cultural Centre of the Municipality of Athens and its beautiful facilities. It was near the city center and at the end we had the opportunity to visit both the modern and the ancient part of Athens!

The conclusions from the meeting were very encouraging for DECIDER’s work until now. The evaluations were very positive for the outputs and that made us very happy!

The meeting was a great success also because we had a lot of support by other team too! 

A big thanks to:

• MARGARITA’s canteen team for their service and the delicious food and coffee they provided
• the Skills Empowerment Workshop for the excellent cakes 
• The Gift and Garden Workshops for the gifts they provided to the participants  
• The Work Inclusion team who job-shadowed and provided the secretariat for the meeting.