Internal Seminar DG Regio: ' Would you call this home'?
From: TROST Jana (REGIO)
Sent: Tuesday, April 20, 2010 6:33 PM
To: GAUGGEL-ROBINSON Gisela (ELARG); DE LOBKOWICZ Wenceslas (ELARG); DESMEDT Julien (ELARG)
Cc: MANDMETS Renaldo (REGIO); RASMUSSEN Carsten (REGIO); VELIKOV Tsvyatko (REGIO); DE LETTER Liesbet (REGIO); URMOS Andor (REGIO)
Subject: Seminar on de institutionalisation - DG Enlargement
Dear Mrs.Gauggel-Robinson, Mr. De Lobkowics, and Mr. Desmedt,
On 29 April, DG Regio is organising a seminar ' Would you call this home'?, where best practices in de institutionalisation process will be presented. Prominent speakers from DG Region and DG Employment, international leading NGOs on this sector, UN (Human Rights and UNICEF), including representatives from some member states will hold presentations.
The reasoning for the seminar comes from the fact that across Europe more than one million children and adults live in long-stay residential institutions, and with an ageing population, an increasing number of elderly people are taken into institutionalised care. For several decades academic and professional experts have warned against the intrinsic social and psychological damage to individuals caused by extended stays in institutions. According to these experts, this damage occurs even in well financed and well functioning institutions, as long term stay hampers the psychological and social development of residents/patients. This is of particular concern for young babies, as there is increasing evidence that institutionalisation impairs their brain development and stunts physical growth.
In recent years a number of international organisations and NGOs have taken steps in the direction of promoting the replacement of institutions with community based care (i.e. care and services delivered directly within the community, as opposed to care necessitating the long term displacement of care users), and an increasing number of funding initiatives are based on this principle in and out of Europe.
Ad Hoc Expert Group (known also a on the Transition from Institutional to community-based Care, which deals with the process known as "de-institutionalisation" issued a Report of the Ad Hoc Expert Group on the transition from Institutional to Community based Care (September 2009). This report also includes recommendations made to the Member States and Commission services in terms of promoting best practice and proactively supporting the process of de-institutionalisation.
In the begin of March this year, the recommendations of Špidla Group were discussed by DG Regional Policy Directors. One of the measures which was decided was the organisation of a training event with the aim of introducing EC staff to the topic.
As we are aware that activities related to de institutionalisation are eligible also under the programme managed by DG Enlargement, we thought that this seminar might be of interest also for your colleagues. We would appreciate if you could distribute this information among the units which are responsible for implementing related programmes/projects, and encourage colleagues to attend the workshop. The submission to the training event should be possible directly through your internal training system.
Please find attached the programme of the seminar, as well as the report issued by Ad hoc Expert Group.
For any further information, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Kind regards,
Jana Trost
Jana TROST
European Commission
Directorate-General for Regional Policy
Unit I2 - 'Structural and Cohesion Funds in Bulgaria'
Tervurernlaan 41, Office 9/68
B-1049 Brussels
Phone:+32 2 299 41 20
Fax: +32 2 292 01 41
E mail: jana.trost@ec.europa.eu
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:
To:
Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2010 09:52:17 +0200
Subject: FW: Seminar on de institutionalisation - DG Enlargement
Dear Delia,
can you kindly check whether we should advertise this training event? if appropriate, we can make an announcement on the intranet - but it would obviously help if the subject was first checked and evaluated by the COFO
if appropriate, you could maybe send a circular mail to colleagues
(it is of course a pity that the announcement comes at such short notice)
thanks and regards
Gisela
From: TROST Jana (REGIO)
Sent: Tuesday, April 20, 2010 6:33 PM
To: GAUGGEL-ROBINSON Gisela (ELARG); DE LOBKOWICZ Wenceslas (ELARG); DESMEDT Julien (ELARG)
Cc: MANDMETS Renaldo (REGIO); RASMUSSEN Carsten (REGIO); VELIKOV Tsvyatko (REGIO); DE LETTER Liesbet (REGIO); URMOS Andor (REGIO)
Subject: Seminar on de institutionalisation - DG Enlargement
Dear Mrs.Gauggel-Robinson, Mr. De Lobkowics, and Mr. Desmedt,
On 29 April, DG Regio is organising a seminar ' Would you call this home'?, where best practices in de institutionalisation process will be presented. Prominent speakers from DG Region and DG Employment, international leading NGOs on this sector, UN (Human Rights and UNICEF), including representatives from some member states will hold presentations.
The reasoning for the seminar comes from the fact that across Europe more than one million children and adults live in long-stay residential institutions, and with an ageing population, an increasing number of elderly people are taken into institutionalised care. For several decades academic and professional experts have warned against the intrinsic social and psychological damage to individuals caused by extended stays in institutions. According to these experts, this damage occurs even in well financed and well functioning institutions, as long term stay hampers the psychological and social development of residents/patients. This is of particular concern for young babies, as there is increasing evidence that institutionalisation impairs their brain development and stunts physical growth.
In recent years a number of international organisations and NGOs have taken steps in the direction of promoting the replacement of institutions with community based care (i.e. care and services delivered directly within the community, as opposed to care necessitating the long term displacement of care users), and an increasing number of funding initiatives are based on this principle in and out of Europe.
Ad Hoc Expert Group (known also a on the Transition from Institutional to community-based Care, which deals with the process known as "de-institutionalisation" issued a Report of the Ad Hoc Expert Group on the transition from Institutional to Community based Care (September 2009). This report also includes recommendations made to the Member States and Commission services in terms of promoting best practice and proactively supporting the process of de-institutionalisation.
In the begin of March this year, the recommendations of Špidla Group were discussed by DG Regional Policy Directors. One of the measures which was decided was the organisation of a training event with the aim of introducing EC staff to the topic.
As we are aware that activities related to de institutionalisation are eligible also under the programme managed by DG Enlargement, we thought that this seminar might be of interest also for your colleagues. We would appreciate if you could distribute this information among the units which are responsible for implementing related programmes/projects, and encourage colleagues to attend the workshop. The submission to the training event should be possible directly through your internal training system.
Please find attached the programme of the seminar, as well as the report issued by Ad hoc Expert Group.
For any further information, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Kind regards,
Jana Trost
Jana TROST
European Commission
Directorate-General for Regional Policy
Unit I2 - 'Structural and Cohesion Funds in Bulgaria'
Tervurernlaan 41, Office 9/68
B-1049 Brussels
Phone:+32 2 299 41 20
Fax: +32 2 292 01 41
E mail: jana.trost@ec.europa.eu
==========================================
Time Session title Speaker
9.30 - 9.40 Introduction Katarina Mathernova, Deputy director general, Directorate General for Regional Policy
9.40 - 9.50 Introduction Lenia Samuel, Deputy director General, Directorate General for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportiunities
9.50 - 10.05 Human rights and de institutionalisation process Jan Jarab, Regional Representative for Europe of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
10.05 - 10.20 Lessons learned from UNICEF experience in Eastern Europe Jean-Claude Legrand, Senior Regional Advisor Child Protection, UNICEF Regional Office CEE-CIS
10.20 - 10.45 The Spidla Ad hoc group report on the Transition from institutional to Community based care Jan Pfeiffer, Children’s High Level Group, Lumos, chairman
10.45 - 10.55 What is wrong with institutional care? Georgette Mulheir, Director of operations, Children’s High Level Group, Lumos
10.55 - 11.05 Short film on institutional care for children
11.05 - 11.25 Questions and Answers, Coffee break
11.25 - 11.45 Community based services for children and families Luk Zelderloo, Secretary General, EASPD European Association of Service Providers
11.45 - 11.55 Challenges in de-institutionalisation – what can go wrong Georgette Mulheir, Children’s High Level Group, Lumos
11.55 - 12.10 Presentation of the Greek case "Harris Assimopoulos, Social Worker PhD, Department of Child Psychiatry the “Aghia Sophia” Children’s Hospital,Coordinator of Association for the Psychosocial, Health of Children & Adolescents
"
12.10 - 12.25 Best practice model of de-institutionalisation Georgette Mulheir, Children’s High Level Group, Lumos
12.25.-12.40 Bulgarian example of cooperation to ensure best outcomes for children Nadia Shabani, Head of the Child Protection Agency, Bulgaria
12.40 - 12.55 Questions and Answers
12.55 - 13.00 Closing remarks Carsten Rasmussen, DG Regional Policy, deputy head of Unit, Unit responsible for Bulgaria