EATT
Pari Opportunità nell’Apprendimento dell’Informatica:
Un progetto finalizzato a migliorare la conoscenza del computer nelle persone con disabilità visiva.
EATT è patrocinato dal
Progetto Europeo Leonardo da Vinci
Director Of Siadv Brittany-Normandy
Good morning ladies and gentlemen, I would like to begin with a particularwelcome to Mr. Patrick Rislain, who is representing Ms. Dominique Gillot, State Secretary for Health and Social Welfare, Ms. Roselyne Bachelot, Member of Parliament for Maine et Loire, and Mr. Jacques Charlin, President of the Blind Crusade.
We are here this morning to mark the outcome of two years of work with our five European partners. They are from Italy, Denmark, the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and France. I would like to thank them for having allowed us to organise this final conference here in Paris.
As an introduction, I would like to invite Mr. Jacques Charlin, President of the Blind Crusade, to speak.
President Of The Blind Crusade
Mr. Rislain, representing Ms. Gillot, Ms. Bachelot, ladies and gentlemen, dear friends.
I don't imagine that the organisers of this conference invited me to speak here today with the intention of testing me, but I believe, on the contrary, that they were concerned with having a blind person speak to you by way of introduction. I am conscious of this insignificant symbol (in the French language, a synonym of 'symbolic' is 'insignificant'). There is a very real risk attached, because I do not come from the medico-social sector and, what is more, academics are not renowned for being in touch with the professional world. I hope that my presentation will not be simply symbolic.
Let us begin with some statistics:
In the European Union, the proportion of visually impaired people who are unemployed is five times greater that the average. In France, despite the fact that the law passed on the 10/07/87 foresaw a minimum quota of 6% of personnel being disabled, last year's figures showed a result of just 4%. I am particularly concerned with the situation of disabled people who have not reached the level of education of A-levels. They are by far the most numerous. Two statistics confirm my concerns. Out of the 26 321 contracts awarded by AGEFIPH between 1990 and 1997, 52% concerned people who had their A-levels or a higher qualification, and out of a total number of 210 000 students in training schools, 700 are disabled, or only one in 300.
Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights stipulates the unalienable right to work. Why should visually impaired people be excluded from this ? Working does not only mean earning a wage, rather it means feeling useful, integrated; taking on an assignment, a responsibility; participating in a group activity ; having a certain status in society, a certain dignity. At a time when the emphasis - and rightly so - is on full citizenship, it is unacceptable that visually impaired people should be deprived of their right to work.
That being said, I am advocating neither favouritism nor preferential treatment. In all circumstances, the level of competence must prevail. This presupposes training or rehabilitation of a high quality as well as a coherent adaptation of the workstation.
On the subject of equipping the workstation, I would like to emphasise the importance of assessment and advice, and my desire to see the setting up of testing grounds for adaptive equipment.
It is not necessary for me to outline the activities carried out by the professionals in specialised schooling establishments and in professional rehabilitation centres. They satisfy a need, they are often innovative, and most of them are well known. Regional services such as the Interregional Support Service for Visually Impaired Adults (S.I.A.D.V.) carry out a complementary, extremely essential role.
Personally, I believe more and more in the relevance of the activities being developed by services which accompany the user in terms of his or her social and professional integration. The experience of S.I.A.D.V., which intervenes in 22 counties and 5 regions, leads me to make 4 further points:
It is not always visually impaired people who have to go to the service; it is often more logical for the professionals to meet up with them at home or at their place of work.
For someone who loses their sight, keeping their job is not necessarily impossible by means of a few adaptations. There is no need for deception, nor for throwing in the towel before the fight begins. The range of professions accessible to visually impaired people is a lot larger than one may think. A list, which is certainly not exhaustive, includes around one hundred jobs. This diversity is clear upon reading the document "The Blind At Work", developed thanks to the initiative of Philippe Chazal, Director of the Training and Professional Rehabilitation Centre, and in which the Blind Crusade actively collaborated.
We must show imagination, take into account the constant evolution of the labour market, remain on the lookout for new opportunities without necessarily rejecting traditional professions. An unflagging effort to increase awareness, and to provide information and training is required concerning all the professionals in the world of work, decision-makers, employers, company doctors, the staff of employment agencies, skills assessment centres, professional integration organisations, preparation and monitoring teams in cases of redeployment.
Is it their fault if they know very little about the problems linked to disabilities and the potential of visually impaired people ? Most of them are very willing to learn. Let us not fail to meet their expectations, let us use these expectations to satisfy our needs by going and meeting them.
After making such remarks as these, it is only natural that I should insist that S.I.A.D.V. and other similar services should adopt regulations which would recognise their missions, and which would guarantee both their status and the ongoing provision of funding.
My own pride as President will not suffer in the slightest if I admit to you that S.I.A.D.V. was not created as a result of a spontaneous decision by its two managing bodies, 'La Mutualité d'Anjou' and the Blind Crusade, but rather as a result of the need to provide adapted responses on the ground.
The creation of a service such as this one illustrates very well the importance of networks and of everything which is able to promote communication, synergy, the sharing of human resources and technical know-how.
I cannot advocate the idea of working in partnership today without underlining transnational projects as a means of doing so. Loc Haffray will be able to confirm that the remarks I am making are not dictated by circumstances. I immediately supported the project 'Employment Support Practices', the first fruits of which we shall gather today. Without denying the differing stakes which sometimes appeared between the partners, without underestimating the differences, even the contradictions, which may exist between some of the aspects of the situation of disabled people in the five countries, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy and France, I am convinced that the debating of ideas and the exchange of experience would have been a source of mutual enrichment and would have enabled new paths to be forged in order to improve the professional integration of visually impaired people into the mainstream. I would like to congratulate the five partners for the magnificent work that has been carried out, and I would like to express our very strong gratitude to those who enabled it to be carried out. I am thinking of course of the two funding bodies, the European Social Fund and AGEFIPH.
After HORIZON comes EQUAL. I hope that within the framework of the new programme that funding will be allocated to the continuation and the refining of the work already being carried out. Why not make the most of the occasion to open up to other partners Article 13 of the Treaty of Amsterdam (June 1997) in which disability is included for the first time amongst the forms of discrimination against which the European Community must fight. Sure, it does not constitute an action in itself. Article 13 cannot have immediate effect nor grant automatic rights to citizens; it will require the further adoption of measures for its application.
I take the liberty, nevertheless, of hoping that it will encourage the European Union to attach much more importance to the specific needs of disabled people, notably in that which concerns social and employment policy.
No to privileges, yes to solidarity because it promotes equal opportunities and enables the person concerned to become more independent, more efficient, freer, more responsible, and consequently more dignified, more fulfilled and happier.
It is easy to get overexcited about the personalities of certain blind people, the artistic genius which is confirmed, the exceptional dexterity of computer operators which is established, and even, keeping things in perspective, the apparent ease of someone who addresses two or three words into a microphone. The older I get, the more this kind of enthusiasm, too often fleeting in nature, leaves me cold.
Is our society ready to take the step from a brief moment of wonder to having confidence ?
On the eve of the third millennium, isn't that our real fight?
Mr. Charlin, thank you for your words. I would now like to invite Mr. Patrick Rislain, from the office of Ms. Gillot MP, to speak.
On Behalf Of Ms. Gillot MP
Ladies and gentlemen, I will read you a message that Ms. Dominique Gillot, State Secretary for Health and Social Welfare would have liked to present to you herself today.
Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,
I would very much have liked to have been able to accept your invitation and to close your seminar devoted to support practices for the employment of visually impaired people in five countries. The setting chosen, that of UNESCO, emphasises perfectly the transnational character of this exchange.
My particularly heavy schedule in this period in which we are to vote on the State budget and that of the Social Security does not, alas, enable me to be with you today. I regret this fact, and would like, nevertheless, through this message, to greet your guests and friends representing the visually impaired people of Denmark, Ireland, Italy and the United Kingdom. I would also like to offer you my support and to assure you of the particular interest that the French government has in the disabled, notably in visually impaired people.
In fact, for the last two years we have been putting in place an overall long-term policy in favour of the three million disabled citizens of this country, developed with the aid of their representative associations. This policy aims to cover all aspects of their life, across every age group, whatever the origin and the nature of the disability may be, in order to promote their complete integration into society. However, on the eve of the year 2000, employment is still the primary factor of social cohesion, through which everyone can obtain financial independence, make the most of his or her skills, and prove his or her social usefulness. It thus constitutes a decisive element in the integration of disabled people.
As a matter of principle, market logic is not opposed to the recognition and the acceptance by businesses of the disabled person as being a producer and a worker. It is not the impairment that has an effect, as more and more often this can be compensated for through a variety of means. What is relevant is, rather, professional competence, know-how, motivation and the ability to adapt to the job.
Guided by these considerations, the government has thus undertaken, through the impetus of Martine Aubry, Minister for Employment and Solidarity, an ambitious relaunching of the policy of access to employment for disabled people. At the heart of this action is the obligation of businesses to employ disabled workers. It aims to remove the numerous obstacles that exist in terms of vocational guidance, training and monitoring in employment. It aims to ensure better continuity and a higher complementary level between the mainstream workplace and the sheltered workplace.
For this reason, different measures have been undertaken, amongst which are:
The overhaul and consolidation of the partnership between the key actors in public employment policy (notably through the signing last year of a five-year convention between the State and the Managing Association of Funding for the Professional Integration of Disabled People - AGEFIPH).
The undertaking by this association of a one-off three-year programme provided with 1.5 billion francs to develop methods of professional integration.
Individualised support provided for the 90 000 extra disabled job-seekers as part of the national action plan to promote employment which was adopted at the conclusion of the Luxembourg summit.
The creation of 11 000 extra places in sheltered work structures as part of a pluri-annual programme from 1999 to 2003.
Visually impaired workers will of course benefit from all of these measures. They will be more effective as their implementation will be flexible enough to be able to be adapted to the specific aspects of the different forms of disability, including visual impairment.
This supposes the prior existence of a good understanding of the particular problems faced by the people who suffer from the disability and of the responses which prove to be the most effective.
The objective of the HORIZON project, funded by the European Social Fund, is to improve the possibilities of access to the labour market for disabled people through a study of the experiences in different countries. You knew precisely, and we are grateful to you for it, how to make the most of these guidelines to develop a report describing current practices relating to employment access in the five pre-named countries and to suggest the way forward in order to improve it. I reiterate that in France the number of visually impaired people who are unemployed is estimated, through lack of more reliable statistics, at more than 50% of partially sighted and blind people of working age.
There are several explanations for this unsatisfactory state of affairs:
Firstly, the level of qualifications. In fact, according to a recent study, 80% of these people have a level lower than or equal to the GCSE.
Besides this, professional training courses are still too little diversified and new technology is still too complex to use for the large majority of visually impaired people even if at the same time it opens up fantastic opportunities in terms of information, communication and independence.
To this is added the difficulties linked to movement. Only 40% of the people concerned go from place to place on their own and a lot of professions require a drivers licence. What is more, if it is found to be necessary to depend on the help of a third person in their life outside of the work place, it is not the same at work where only 5% of blind people benefit from human aid.
Finally we can highlight the fact that employers have a fairly large lack of knowledge in terms of the potential of visually impaired people.
While on this subject I will indicate that my Department has recently put into place a Mobility Instructor's Diploma, a study for the recognition of the qualification of Transcripter, a policy of accessibility to transport and to everyday life and work, and a policy for improving awareness and information in businesses on the capabilities of partially sighted and blind workers.
These are all responses that the government undertakes to promote. The success of their action will depend, however, as much on their determination that I confirm to you today, as on the active participation of all their partners: communities, businesses and associations.
The reduction in the number of disabled people who are unemployed recorded for the first time this year shows that we are on the right track. We must pursue our efforts because it is a long-term action that calls on deep changes to be made in our collective way of thinking and in our behaviour.
Fundamentally, in fact, it is society, it is our societies together that we must, at the moment when social Europe is being built, urge to overcome their own blindness in relation to disabled people, notably to visually impaired people. They must learn to look beyond the impairment and see the incomparable richness that is the difference in human persons.
Your meeting today is a part of this very necessary teaching process. Again, I renew my total support and wish you every success in your work.
Dominique Gillot
Mr. Rislain, thank you. We are going to hear from Ms. Roselyne Bachelot, Member of Parliament for Maine et Loire. I must say that our European partners greatly appreciate your presence here today and I thank you for having been one of our very first ardent supporters for the SIADV project. Ms. Bachelot, it's over to you.
Member Of Parliament For Maine Et Loire
Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen
I would firstly like to express my pleasure in being with you this morning at UNESCO, my pleasure in having been invited by the Interregional Support Service for Visually Impaired Adults and my pleasure in meeting numerous European experts a few days before the third millennium and the future French presidency of the European Union.
Europe is firstly nearly 40 million disabled people who want to be citizens like everyone else but we are well aware that this citizenship is thwarted everywhere by social models which are protective in nature rather than being integratory and the European Union was able, and rightly so, to be able to refer to disabled people as "the invisible citizens".
However, after 1981, proclaimed as International Year of the Disabled by the United Nations, European institutions had decreed some recommendations - integration into work and the right to education - and above all had launched programmes such as HELIOS which afterwards became an independent association - financed, sure, by the Union European but independent - enabling the exchange of experience and formulating precise recommendations destined for the European Community.
Intervention was also more direct in sectors such as new technology (TIDE), education and training (LEONARDO) and especially employment with the famous HORIZON programme that will be presented to you shortly by Ms. Delecluse or the new EQUAL.
In the beginning, these policies did not have a legal basis. They have one now with the rules adopted by the United Nations at the General Meeting of the 20th of December 1993 relating to equal opportunities for disabled people and taken up by the European Union in the document on European social policy. It was necessary to wait for the Treaty of Amsterdam to see an anti-discrimination clause adopted thanks to, it must be said, the lobbying of some associations. But it must be admitted that the United Nations' recommendations still go unheeded in the generous social programmes of Europe, structural funds, and that the sums gathered are still marginal.
This is all the more incomprehensible when we consider that the number of retirees will reach nearly 120 million people in Europe in 2030, and that a certain number of these people will be invalids.
These people will be users of technology, of processes, of structures, of services. Everything we do, everything we imagine today for some individuals will be useful tomorrow for everyone and in particular at the pole made up of citizens who are the chance of Europe.
The example of the Interregional Support Service for Visually Impaired Adults is enlightening in this regard. I remember as if it were yesterday its presentation by Loc Haffray and Francis Guiteau.
The point was simple : the visually impaired child was suitable taken care of in terms of his education but nothing existed to help him once he became an adult. Of course there were generalist structures but they were ignorant of the specific aspects of visual impairment. The situation of those people who "became blind" was perhaps even worse with the risk of losing their job immediately.
Faced with these situations which carry a strong risk factor, the offer of a service was relevant and the methods adopted were easily able to be serve as models. These methods also enabled the development of the concept that guides the legislators and the policy decision-makers.
Firstly a phase of research and experimentation
Partners - who certainly mean well - but who have a romantic and unrealistic approach, often backed by a vision that is too subjective, often discourage the financiers of institutions.
A wide survey carried out within services and associations in around twenty counties in the west of France enabled the foreshadowing of one year that began at the end of 1995. This preparatory stage shows the absolute necessity of tools to aid the decision, initiated by extensive research, as much scientific research in the wide sense of the term as opinion polls and market studies. It also implies the right to experimentation and we hope that the reform of the 1975 law relating to social and medico-social institutions will enable this to happen.
Next, a demand which replaces the classic administrative, local approach with an interregional approach with a real exchange of knowledge between Montéclair in Angers, SERDAA in Laval and the centre at Plenée-Jugon. If we want a personalised approach to disability, it is of course necessary to multiply the solutions but also to reach the critical masses that enable the scale to be kept down.
One would have hoped that the confusion over skills generated by the decentralisation laws would allow a better partnership to develop between communities. There is no evidence of this happening. The clarification of skills is even more necessary if we want to establish these partnerships in order to avoid everyone shedding his or her responsibilities.
Lastly a step which integrates the specific aspects of visual impairment instead of trying to pour it into the mould of "mainstream" solutions. Because it is really the lack of knowledge about these specific aspects which leads to professional integration being blocked. This specialisation must concern each step of the professional integration: rehabilitation, training support, but above all the accompaniment in employment through direct monitoring of the person and the maintenance of his or her work station. This requires a change of perspective. The professional people in charge at a national and a community level can no longer be content to meet the obligation of providing means, a strictly charitable approach, but rather must meet the obligation of providing results, a professional process.
Finally these methods must be those used by everyone who wants to fight against the tide of a society which, even in 1835, Tocqueville saw as being easier and calmer for certain of its members, but who saw an increase in "the number of those who will need to have recourse to the support of their fellow men in order to be able to gather even a small part of all these treasures". And Tocqueville continued: "It will be possible to slow down this two-fold movement.
The particular circumstances in which the different peoples are placed will accelerate or slow down its progression. But no-one can stop it".
In this regard, the situation in France is enlightening. Even though we hear praised the performance of the employment situation, the numbers of those on income support grew by 50 000 last year, the sum allocated to fund it have increased for the year 2000, the very social demand increased by 8% at the counters of the Family Allowance Offices. What is more, the people in charge of associations such as F.N.A.R.S. are sounding the alarm in reference to the pockets of long-term exclusion that our society is in the process of establishing for those who are worst-off.
Europe can be the methodological and financial driving force in a fight which has practically been abandoned by our European governments and disability is certainly an arena in which to perform if the Union knows how to make use of experiences such as those of SIADV.
Ladies and gentlemen, you know that everything is relative. H.G. Wells tells the story of a man lost in the mountains who reaches a valley populated by blind people. He imagines that it will be easy to become the leader of this society. But he rapidly realises that in a world of blind people, a sighted person is the disabled one. So he runs away...within our society we can very quickly become disabled by others!
Europe and the key players on the ground invite us to follow this path and to embrace this approach, cutting out charitable, backward-looking approaches. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bachelot. We will now invite Ms. Delecluse to speak to us about the European Social Fund and the next EQUAL programme.
By Ms. Delecluse, Representative Of The Department For The European Social Fund And Community Programmes
I have the difficult task of following on from such a fascinating political presentation. In my opinion my role is simply that of a representative; I am just a willing person who puts the programmes into practice at the level of the department of the European Social Fund. I am in the management service. I am not in charge, within this service, of the "Employment" programme. More particularly, I am in charge of the objective of the European Social Fund, that is to say the adaptation of workers to industrial changes.
Having said that, I am here simply to speak to you about the community initiative programme "Employment" on which I will give you some feedback. I propose to divide my presentation into three points:
In fact, I am feeling fine about it because beyond the "Employment" initiative whose main objective and focus was people in professional integration, you will rediscover this objective of economic, social and integratory cohesion in all the programmes.
I will also speak to you about a small current activity at the end of the programming of objective four.
So, in a few points and a few figures, the "Employment" initiative represents for us, at the French level, 1.4 billion francs, 1100 projects (150 at the national level and 950 regional - 75% of the projects are run by associations and 50% by training organisations).
Thus you are well aware of the sub-programmes of this community initiative programme : USTAND, INTEGRAL, NOW and HORIZON.
USTAND focuses on the professional integration of young people and there were 15000 beneficiaries. INTEGRAL focuses on the professional integration of people who have been excluded from the labour market in the long-term and there were 17000 beneficiaries. NOW seeks equal opportunities between men and women and there were 26000 beneficiaries. Finally, in the HORIZON programme that concerns you more particularly, there were 17000 beneficiaries during the period 1994 to 1999.
Beyond this community initiative programme, more particularly focusing on professional integration, you have the ADATE initiative that focuses on the disabled employees of companies, with a budget of 1.6 billion francs and which concerns 800 projects (200 at the national level) and 10000 beneficiaries. 30% of these projects are essentially run by companies, the business sector, and advisory organisations. 40% are run by training organisations.
You also have other initiatives such as CONVER, REICHER, INTERAGUE, RETEX, (all the community initiative organisations) corresponding to 9% of the total budget of structural funds and which reached 100 000 beneficiaries in France, with an overall budget of 3.8 billion francs.
These Community initiatives, through the impetus of the Commission, support the structural policies of the Member States. You will find the structural policies of the Member States throughout Objective 1 for zones in difficulty, Objectives 2 and 5b for the zones undergoing industrial decline or conversion into agricultural zones, Objectives 3 and 4 focusing on the job-seeking population or employees with difficulties in terms of professional orientation. For France, the totality of these objectives corresponds to a budget of 32 billion francs over the whole period and has reached 8 million beneficiaries.
Next, of course, you have experimental, innovative and transnational programmes. You are an example of this here today, but you have a lot of activities that have been funded on the structural objectives. And I am simply going to give you a figure on Objective 3, Measure 21, which for the end of the programming for 1999/2000, corresponds to 380 million francs and in particular on Objective 4.
With the organisations that collect funds from companies and the sheltered workplace association, we have just concluded an agreement in favour of company employees for better training and qualifications within the company and the sheltered workplace themselves.
I would like to digress in order to explain to you just how complex the situation is during this end phase of the programming. I have just quoted you some figures and we are in the process of putting together the qualitative evaluation. It is a bit premature to talk about this evaluation, of the extent of the impact.
We will need to wait at least for the period 2001/2002 to receive the precise data. But I will already be able to, with the help of the work of Agenda 2000 and the information provided by the European Commission, to explain and to present to you the planned development.
The details of Agenda 2000 represent a multitude of programmes.
We can note the presence of disabled workers in the totality of these programmes. But we do not have a monitoring system that is sufficiently precise, and, I will admit, the end phase of the programming became a little out of control at the end. There were difficulties involved in putting the programmes into practice and we really have had a large increase in these programmes since 1997.
So, a multitude of programmes, a multitude of players, and I will not repeat what Ms. Bachelot said: as difficult for the administration as for the local players. A complex set of procedures which those involved in projects are well aware of, a race to obtain public funding, a constant fight whatever the level that one is at and a weight of financial circuits. It is necessary to have a very good accounts department: it of course ensures one's election to the European Social Fund.
You are all aware of the problem of annual installments, advances, balances which increase, by the daily tasks which are purely and simply administrative in nature, at the very heart of the projects and of the support and help that we can provide in terms of these projects.
All this has lead the Commission, throughout this work, to provide recommendations which are currently being prepared for future programmes, following a study of their effects.
What were these recommendations?
The simplification of this objective which covered the previous period. We are heading towards three objectives for the period 2000/2006. Of thirteen initiatives managed at the national level, we are heading towards four initiatives which are INTERAGUE, LEADER, URBAN, existing through the efforts of Members of Parliament, because it was not planned in the beginning, and EQUAL, which we will talk about a little later.
A greater level of subsidiarity, that is to say that the European Community, in all of the programmes, will have an observing role and not a participating role within the monitoring committee. This gives each Member State greater responsibility; a decision by the Commission within the framework of the programmes in terms of the principal guidelines and no longer in terms of each measure. To go into more detail, I will make reference to the totality of the measures under Objective 3, the sub-measures. The Commission, in terms of the monitoring process, hopes to no longer concentrate on, as it has concentrated on in the current period, the financial model, on the carrying out of each individual measure and to give a lot more latitude and a lot more responsibility to the users of these funds.
A better level of monitoring, to be more demanding at the beginning in terms of quantifying, the measure of the situation, the objectives and the indicators, a greater amount of monitoring and a better measure of the impact of these programmes.
A policy of following up inspections and, more and more, the partnerships put into place earlier and a more fluid flow of funds.
The French systems are not ready but there is a wish to have a more fluid flow of all funds.
What does this mean at our level for the preparation of the programmes for the period 2000-2006?
I am a citizen like you and I read the information in the newspaper. The adoption of reglementation for funding and for each fund was done in June. This adoption of reglementation means for us firstly the preparation of the document which concerns Objective 3 and which will be the reference document for the policy for the management of human resources in the Member State, of the qualification of the management of these skills.
We are currently, at the level of the Member State of the programming fund, at Objective 3. The ESF is becoming the financial instrument of the national action plan for employment and at the service of the European strategy for employment.
This strategy is organised around four pivotal points:
This European strategy, shared by all the fifteen Member States, is translated, within the framework of regulations, by spheres of action.
More precisely, there are five spheres of action which have already been the object of numerous comings and goings and negotiations.
We are currently, like in all the Member States, in the preparatory stage of this programme and we have developed a strategic plan was handed in to the European Commission at the end of October.
We are entering into the negotiation phase of this programme with the European Commission, knowing that a good part of the funds will be decentralised and that the regional levels are strongly involved in the preparation of the complements of the programming phase.
I will leave with the organisers of this conference the strategic plan handed in by France. You will notice that it is quite general. It covers five areas: it is on the principles of employment, increasing employment, the duration of employment. It corresponds to social consensus. No one can be against it.
It is now, that which will be placed inside and how the complement of the programme is going to be developed that we will really see the political willingness and strategies of the Member States. Thus I invite the regional partners to get close to the State services in the region. The Prefect of the region is in charge of the development of this programme complement under the aegis of the Regional Employment Headquarters. It is in the process of being developed during the consultative meetings that are taking place at the regional level. In the rules, we have until the end of March to send the totality of the French programming concerning Objective 3 to the European Commission, which equates to more that 28 billion francs over the whole period.
When the negotiations over this complement to the programming will be finished, we will have what is called the unique programming document that you have all known during the previous periods and which will give the overall strategy, the plans of action that will be developed. This Objective 3 must be put into practice during the second trimester; I am optimistic.
From July onwards, at the regional level, the depositing and the taking into consideration of the projects should be able to be organised. This Objective will be monitored by a national programme monitoring committee as well as followed through its stages by national committees of regional monitoring which will be in charge of putting into place the European Social Fund at the regional level.
Concerning EQUAL, which concerns you more particularly, EQUAL is going to be put into place in the same manner as that which we are putting in place for Objective 3, that is to say that the process is the same. Currently, the last text that was put out by the Commission (dated the 13th of October) is on the Commission's Internet site and accessible for everyone. It is in the process of being studied by parliament and should be adopted by the 15th of January 2000.
What are the characteristics of EQUAL?
Like Objective 3, EQUAL is strongly linked to the National Action Plan for Employment and the European strategy. The ESF becomes a financial instrument, a political instrument at the service of employment in Europe.
The actual contents of EQUAL make strong reference to the acquired knowledge from ADAPT and EMPLOYMENT, so to all the capitalisation and all the methods and the innovative products which have been put into practice in the previous projects. We can also find a very strong affirmation of innovative and experimental dimensions and a strong focus on the transnational aspect that is the reason for being of the initiative. Its specificity is in the transnational aspect.
It will be organised through progressive intervention by the ESF, and you should know that we are heading towards very distinct steps - you always learn from experience - three distinct steps in the actual content of the initiative. There is one step that focuses essentially on the putting into practice of the Development Partnership, whether they be nation-wide or in a particular sector.
In terms of results, we can come back to what Ms. Bachelot has just said. There will of course be, in terms of results, of the putting into practice of these partnerships, a second step, that is to say the step of the programme of action on employment, qualifications, skills transfer.
With these results comes the third step. It is the dissemination step, the transfer step, with a lot stronger willingness. You will see, there are committees that are a bit specific in the monitoring of the EQUAL programme.
There will be a steering committee that concerns the activities of Mesfriming, which has not happened up until now. There will be steering committees that will be able to see and to integrate all the actors in charge of the transfer of innovations and of experimentation in terms of making them long-term. The call for projects should happen every two years on very precise themes and with targeted actions. The themes are the capacity for professional integration, the spirit of enterprise, the capacity for adaptation, equal opportunities for women and men. It is an objective that cuts across all the programmes.
We hope that there will be a first call for projects at the end of the year 2000. Following the schedule that we must adhere to, the first programme to be put into place is the Objective 3 programme. It is the reference framework for all the ESFs in the Member States, whether it be for the regions Objective 1 or Objective 2, or for the Community Initiative Programmes. Objective 3 will start up first. The EQUAL initiative should see its first projects at the end of 2000.
I have forgotten to tell you that we have some dissentions for which I do not think that there will be any alternatives. The Member State of France is not satisfied with its budget allocation, which concerns the EQUAL initiative.
In fact, on Objective 3, we were relatively satisfied with the budget allocated to us because it gives us approximately the equivalent of what we had in the previous period, that is to say 4.3 billion per year on the EQUAL initiative.
We have a budget which corresponds, over the totality of the programming, to 2 billion francs, which is about 50 - 55% of the budget which corresponded to the initiatives of EMPLOYMENT and ADAPT if we want to make a comparison. We have funded 2000 projects during the current period, and we will have to perhaps fund less projects but projects which involve more, disseminate more and integrate more in terms of a partnership. A consequence that will not necessarily be worse, far from it, it's up to us to do with it what we want to do with it.
Ms. Delecluse, thank you for this technical but warmly presented information. Now we will invite our partners to speak, in order to explain to us and to introduce the theme of the European project "Employment Support Practices for Visually Impaired People".
By Blaithin Gallagher (Ncbi) And Egon Walesch (Rnib)
The ESP project is funded by the EU, through its EMPLOYMENT HORIZON Initiative. It has developed a transnational partnership, with partners from 5 EU countries
NCBI and RNIB have collaborated in a number of European programmes, including the previous round of HORIZON. Blaithin and Egon had discussed potential projects together in the early part of 1997 and we had tentatively agreed to a partnership in this round subject to complementary project plans. SIADV, Arhus AMT and IRIFOR approached NCBI during 1997 with a view to a partnership in the next round of Horizon Projects.
Extensive communication by e-mail, phone and fax took place to establish the possibility of common ground for a transnational partnership. Transnational visits took place between individual partners. In November 1997 RNIB hosted a meeting of all potential partners in London. The purpose of this meeting was to develop a framework for the transnational co-operation document and come to agreement about the aim and objectives of the transnational partnership. At that meeting, we found that the common elements of our individual, national projects were concerned with employment support practices for visually impaired people. NCBI then drafted a transnational plan and circulated it among the partners for their comments. Finally the transnational co-operation document was agreed and signed.
The aim of this project was to engage in a transnational exploration of employment support practices for visually impaired people to suggest best practice for the creation of new support systems for their social and professional integration into the labour market.
The transnational working group produced a report on employment support practices for visually impaired people in the five member states. Research and exploration of five themes in relation to employment support practice took place in partner countries. These themes included:
During the two years of the project each partner hosted a conference for the transnational group on one of these themes culminating with a discussion on the way forward. These conferences gave the group plenty of space to discuss and debate the issues, which arose during national research. A number of prominent guest speakers outside of the partnership were invited to address the meetings to add to the transnational exchange of information. During the conferences, time was also set aside for project management.
A certain amount of social events were included but of course we kept these to an absolute minimum!
The report which you will find in your packs today is an edited summary of the information gathered by the research and conferences. Recommendations as to a suggested way forward to ensure best practice in employment support for visually impaired people in Europe are included in the document. You will be hearing more about these later today.
The transnational consortium appointed a professional editor, with experience in issues relating to visual impairment to edit the information from each partner for inclusion in the final report.
The initial development of the partnership was not without it's difficulties. These included:
Once these difficulties were ironed out, which one would safely say took at least 9 months (like any good gestation!) the transnational partnership became very effective and the conferences then ran very smoothly. Although we did try to use e-mail as often as possible we found that it was not always the most effective means of communication, again for the reasons outlined above. The regular face-to-face meetings were crucial to the success of this partnership.
After 2 years of collaboration, the benefits of working together have become clear. We have gained tremendous insight into employment support practices for visually impaired people in each other's countries. Much of this is featured in the suggested best practice contained in the Way Forward of our document. However, on a less formal basis, it has led to cross-pollination of ideas and helped inform the services we provide in each country. Furthermore, as well as the knowledge about the situation in each country, we have learned a lot about each other as the project has developed and I think we now have a very effective partnership that understands and accommodates cultural differences and works together as a true partnership. Along the way, we've become firm friends.
Having developed an effective partnership, we feel it is important to build on this and continue our work together. Some of the partners are currently collaborating on a project funded under the EU LEONARDO programme and we are exploring options for funding under upcoming EU programmes so that the experience and expertise gained will not be lost.
The partnership also established a web page, maintained by our Danish partners. The web page gives details of both the national and the transnational projects. The full text of each partner's research in relation to the key themes on a national basis can be found on the web-page http://www.amt.dk/jobvision
Another unforeseen output of the project, perhaps not directly linked to the partnership, has been a number of babies! In the two years so far, 3 members of the partnership team have given birth. Anyone considering joining our partnership in future projects will of course be warned!
To conclude, we very much hope that this transnational exchange of experience and expertise in relation to the development of a 'best practise' Employment Support Service will promote the social and professional integration of blind and visually impaired people in the labour market.
BY DR. STEFAN VON PRONDZINSKI
The Italian partner of the international project HORIZON ESP is I.Ri.Fo.R., the Institution for Research, Training and Rehabilitation. I.Ri.Fo.R. was founded in 1992 by the Italian Blind Union, which has always defended the cultural rights of visually impaired people. According to statistics (source: I.S.T.A.T. Italian Institute of Statistics 1993), in Italy there are approximately 370,000 people with vision lower than 1/10 with correction on the better eye. In legal terms, these people are classified as blind. An exact estimation of the number of partially sighted people is more difficult, for there is no precise definition of low vision, however, the number ranges approximately between 500,000 and one million people.
The Italian Blind Union (U.I.C.) accounts for 98% of members of blind people associations or associations supporting the blind. This is a major difference between Italy and other countries where there are many different associations.
U.I.C. and I.Ri.Fo.R. are non-profit associations of social usefulness (O.N.L.U.S.).
I.Ri.Fo.R. was founded with a view to provide concrete aid in the field of research and of vocational training of the visually impaired, as well as for the preparation of professionals who provide services for the visually impaired and in the field of rehabilitation of blind and partially sighted people. Within a few years, new centres were added to the national office, namely 15 Regional offices and 76 Provincial offices spread all over Italy, all of them absolutely independent.
These centres have promoted hundreds of projects in the three main fields of activity: research, training and rehabilitation. Many of the projects implemented are absolutely new for Italy, for they were realised for the first time ever in this country. The HORIZION Project organised by I.Ri.Fo.R., aimed to create support systems for the integration of people with visual impairments, consists of a series of innovative and particularly specific aspects. The purpose of this paper is to briefly illustrate these aspects.
The national project organised by the I.Ri.Fo.R. Italian branch (based in Rome) took place in Potenza, in the Region of Basilicata. This region boasts a variety of cultural, historical and environmental resources, but at the same time has to confront major social and economic difficulties, like all the other regions of Southern Italy.
The efforts of the Italian Blind Union have made it possible for the young with visual impairments to attend common schools. As regards employment, thanks to the special laws for the blind, the situation is not much worse than for normally sighted people, who are also faced with serious unemployment, especially in the South. Italy's unemployment rate is approximately 12%, as against 2% for the visually impaired (source: ISTAT 1993).
Today's main problems for blind people in Italy is the still strong dependence on others and a general lack of autonomy. As regards employment, people with visual impairments still have a much smaller choice and considerably fewer chances of a satisfying career when compared to non-handicapped people. Visually impaired people who intend to work outside the fields of work protected by law have to face much greater difficulties, especially in managing interpersonal situations and in complex environments. These difficulties are not strictly connected to professional tasks, but are however fundamental for social integration.
The requests for services that facilitate the integration of the visually impaired, such as:
In the regions Basilicata, Puglia, Calabria, Molise and Abruzzo there are no daily living skills or orientation and mobility specialists at all. The regions Sicily and Campania have only one each.
Everything said so far underlines why it is still necessary to foster and push the demand for specialised services for the blind.
This is the reason why the national HORIZON project launched by I.Ri.Fo.R. was focussed on the creation of new professional figures with a high degree of flexibility so as to stimulate and meet the widest range of requests coming from people with visual impairments in terms of daily living skills and orientation and mobility and of the use of technologies aiding communication and access to information.
The core of the HORIZON project consists in training 10 education and rehabilitation specialists for the blind and partially sighted and implementing 30 specialised interventions for visually impaired people. The project started in Autumn 1998 and ended in Autumn 1999 and was carried out in Potenza, Basilicata's capital.
It was the first project of this kind ever implemented in Basilicata. It therefore inevitably addressed many organisational problems, also because the site of the organisation responsible for it was quite distant. These problems were solved thanks to the strong efforts of the I.Ri.Fo.R. local office, the Italian Blind Union and the Basilicata regional authority.
The trainers were recruited from local qualified bodies (the Local Health Unit and the hospital). For the main subjects, external trainers with specialised knowledge of vocational training material were chosen. The Director of the professional preparation course also took part in the international project, so as to ensure a wider exchange of information.
The preparation course consisted of 1,500 hours and was divided into five different sections:
The main purpose of the course was to train professionals who could work in the various fields both as employees and on a self-employment basis. For this reason, the course also included the development of promotion management and documentation skills with respect to the professions in question.
It is extremely interesting to illustrate the training procedures applied in the course. During half of the practical training hours the trainees were made to have limited sight (with low-vision simulation glasses) or were made blind by blindfolds. During most of the practical training, the trainee had a one-to-one relation with the trainer, who could thus act both on the technical aspect and on the psychological and educational ones.
Another important training strategy was the "teach-back" method: a trainee taught what he/she had just learned to another trainee, who was blindfolded or wearing low vision simulation glasses.
Yet another training strategy which proved extremely useful was the "role playing": the blindfolded trainer played various roles, showing a different characteristic typical of visually impaired future students. In this way, while learning to teach a special technique, the trainees were forced to consider all the various aspects that may arise during a rehabilitation programme.
In this way, it was possible to teach them from the beginning how to adapt the technical aspects to the specific requirements of their future students.
The one-to-one teaching sessions as well as the teach-back and the role-playing classes were often recorded on video so as to analyse and discuss the trainees' professional and personal attitudes, thus preparing them to accept and put up with criticisms as well as to criticise the others productively.
All this was aimed to enhance in them the necessary skills for the creation and implementation of a multifaceted work context.
The first results of the training course for specialists of education and rehabilitation of the visually impaired were already visible during the work experience. Every trainee organised, directed and analysed a programme of orientation, mobility, daily living skills and utilisation of special information technologies for a group of at least three visually impaired students. Approximately 30 blind people within working age, living in Basilicata, took part in the various stages of the in the field training and were instructed by the trainee under the Supervision of the specialist trainer.
The first work experience was focussed on how to use PCs, Braille display, speech synthesisers and/or screen readers, scanners with OCR and magnifying software. The participants with visual impairments could therefore receive introductory or follow-up knowledge to be used at work and in everyday life and during their leisure time. The use of the Internet and of E-mail today offers blind people new significant possibilities in terms of activities and involvement.
The climax of the work experience was the organisation of a study visit: an effort was made to combine the relaxing and leisure aspect of the trip to a series of specifically-aimed rehabilitation activities. The destination was Maratea, a seaside tourist resort in Basilicata. The participants included 14 visually impaired, 7 trainees and several trainers.
The trainees organised personalised activities aimed to increase the orientation, mobility and the daily living skills of the blind and partially sighted adults (all workers). The purpose was to increase their skills in terms of overall independence and everyday life tasks. Performing these activities away from the Province of residence helped them to achieve their goals sooner, for they were faced with new difficulties, different from those confronted in their daily routines.
This was the first time the trainees organised and directed personalised rehabilitation activities, without the support and co-responsibility of their trainers. This experience proved to be extremely positive and fruitful both for the visually impaired and for the trainees.
Besides organising, directing and analysing the rehabilitation activities, the trainees also had to organise the leisure time. They organised various cultural visits and additional educational and rehabilitation activities. The organisation of the leisure time was in fact one of the tasks included in the training course programme.
At the end of the course, would-be teachers will find no rehabilitation service ready. They will have to actively co-operate to set up these services. Therefore, besides the technical know-how, the education and rehabilitation specialist must also have good organisational skills and must be quite flexible, in order to adapt the services to the needs of the visually impaired and to the human and economic resources available in the area.
The six people who passed their final exam last October and are now qualified education and rehabilitation specialists for students with visual impairments have all demonstrated they possess the various skills required.
The course ended in October 1999 and now in November some of the newly-qualified specialists are already working in the field of blind integration support services, also thanks to the support of the Italian Association of Orientation, Mobility and Daily Living Skills Teachers (A.N.I.O.M.A.P.).
With a view to sustaining the HORIZON national project, I.Ri.Fo.R. has carried out a research on the conditions and procedures to be applied to adapt the workplace to the needs of blind or partially sighted workers. The study will be completed by the end of this year. Besides communicating its results, I.Ri.Fo.R. intends to publish a brochure addressed to all workplaces, explaining the various possibilities of workplace adaptation and the principal legislation supporting the creation and adaptation of workplaces for people with visual impairments.
The beneficiaries of the national project for the creation of new services aimed to sustain the professional and cultural integration of visually impaired people with visual impairments include 10 non-blind specialists and 30 people with visual impairments. The positive results of the project lead I.Ri.Fo.R. and the Italian Blind Union to expect that the integration sustaining services, such as orientation and mobility, daily living skills and introduction to computer knowledge, will multiply in the Basilicata region as well as in all the other regions of Southern Italy. In this way, all people with visual impairments, whatever their region of residence, will have better chances of improving their quality of life, of improving their activities and of maximising their involvement in all fields.
By Ann Tversted And Peter Darre
I would like to start by thanking the SIADV for hosting this conference and making it possible.
In this introduction to make you understand our project I find it necessary to tell you a bit about the Danish system, society and the structure in Denmark.
In Denmark we have a population of approximately 5.5 million people. During the 50s and the 60s our economy was booming, and that meant we could afford to make a social security system that allowed a lot of people to receive transfer incomes and have a good way of living at the same time. That also meant that a lot of people who had a kind of disability received benefits and left the labour market.
So, in Denmark we consider ourselves a welfare society and we still do. It is so now in Denmark that, after a period with a higher unemployment rate and a not so good economy, today the Danish society is booming again. We have a very low unemployment rate in Denmark; it's 5.7%. I must say its only the people who have an insurance that we count in this way, but that's the way statistics are. Now we have the problem that with this low unemployment rate and with a reduced number of young people in the future, we have to emphasise, focus on how do we involve every person qualified in Denmark into the labour force.
So, in Denmark we have a governmental strategy of involving the whole society in getting more people back to the labour market. In Denmark, we don't do it by quotas; it's against the spirit of Danish society. We are trying to do this voluntarily. This means that the government has launched a strategy, saying that its important in the social commitment of companies, they are trying to make... (THE CASSETTE RAN OUT AND HAD TO BE CHANGED AT THIS POINT)...from the labour market back to the labour market.
They don't get special benefits and they don't get punished if they don't take them into the labour market, but it seems in Denmark that this policy of trying to change attitudes is functioning because now the companies have voluntarily started to create networks. It started with a national network of companies and now it has spread to regional networks for companies, where companies help each other to develop policies for the retention for people who are already employed, but also on how to take in people who are now excluded.
That means, in fact, that some companies have now made their own quotas for how many people they want to take in and be responsible for.
We are now trying to create an accommodating labour market with room for everybody and this means that the government has launched new employment legislation that means that people now can be employed in flexible jobs where they receive the normal income as everyone else, as negotiated with the trade unions, and the government then receives some of the payment in return paid by the government, but it means that the person who is employed is receiving the same payment as their colleagues.
The government, by creating these new laws, at the same time they had said that they wanted the Danish society to make, before 2005, they should have created 4000 of this kind of jobs for people who are now threatened by exclusion or who are excluded. It started quite slowly but it is now going faster and they think now that they are going to succeed in having the companies voluntarily create so many jobs for people who are now excluded.
By opening up the labour market this follows in the year 2003 with a new reform of the Benefits Act, and how precisely this will be we don't know yet.
I want to tell you a bit about the structure in the County of Arhus. In Denmark we are organised into 14 counties and the county of Arhus is one of the biggest of them. It has seven departments, and two of these departments are the department for adults with a handicap and the department for education and labour markets, and the reasons that I now highlight these two are that the two institutions in this project come each from one of these departments. Belonging under the department of adults with a handicap is the county resource centre for the blind and visually handicapped which is one of the organisations in the project, and belonging under the department for education and labour market is the rehabilitation clinic.
We started off a process of decentralisation because in 1992 the county resource centre for the blind and visually handicapped was established in the county of Arhus and during their daily work they found out that many of the people who went there to receive ordinary daily living skills or mobility orientation was unemployed or was threatened by exclusion.
At that time we had a regional institution in Copenhagen but we didn't have a regional service that could deal with this problem. So they contacted the rehabilitation clinic who knew something about how to integrate people into the labour market but who didn't have the knowledge about sight and sight problems. So this ended up in establishing a minor project and this project lead into the Horizon project where we are trying to see if we can do this on a regional level.
This meant that we sat down together and said that we have to establish a structure that can make this function. And also we had to be very much aware of which persons should be integrated at the level of making this function and also who are the persons who would be interested in dealing with this project, and this means that though we are public institutions working together, we also collaborate very closely with the local danish association for the blind.
So I'm not going to say much about the structure but just to let you know that at the monitoring level and also at the team level we are working very closely together with this association.
In our project we were very much aware that there were two parts which were very strongly connected. It was the part of job creation and the part of job retention. We wouldn't succeed if we only focused on people who were unemployed because as soon as they were employed then they would receive no support. And otherwise people who were in jobs were to be retained in their jobs it was very important to have an early intervention and give them support so that they didn't have to be unemployed before they could receive support.
So we already at that time decided that we would deal with project participants from both of these parts; it was very important, and we also thought that maybe it was the same sort of methods that could be used for the two groups.
I would like to give a short definition about who was our target group. In Denmark practical blindness is defined as being present when there is a visual acuity of 1/60 or less in the better eye or the field of vision reduced to 10° or less. Social blindness occurs when the visual acuity in the better eye is between 6/60 and 1/60 or when the field of vision is reduced to between 10° and 20°.
Partial sight is defined as being present when there is a visual acuity of 6/18 or less in the better eye. In Denmark it is not legal to register anyone according to sex, religion, political conviction or handicap. This means that we have no precise statistics about the unemployment rate for people who are blind or visually impaired. This means that we only can estimate that in Denmark the number of persons with a visual impairment is about 45000 persons from which 12000 have a visual acuity of 6/60 or less. And it means that in our target group in the County of Arhus has approximately 5000 who are blind or visually impaired, of which 1500 have a visual acuity of 6/60 or less. This is just to inform you that in our project we also had people with low vision and not just people that we call blind.
The purpose of our project was to create and retain jobs for the visually impaired living in the County of Arhus. And it was also to establish and to test the structure and method and contents of a co-ordinated, general orientated rehabilitation service for visually impaired citizens of working age in the County of Arhus. Aiming at employment or at retaining a link to the labour market. But it was also to find out and analyse which job assignments can be carried out locally and for which assistance must be sought outside the county, and in Denmark it means in the institute in Copenhagen. So its a way of finding out what can be done locally and where are the local authorities stronger, for example by networking, by having a close relationship with the local employers and for what kind of job do we need the specialised knowledge that is present in Copenhagen.
In our project our keyword has been an individual approach; it is very important for us that it be the individual who is in charge; that we follow the wishes and the abilities of the individual, and one of our jobs is to broaden the possibilities for the individual, finding out is this possible or that is important to get as close to the wishes of the individual as possible. We find it very important and when people come to our project and compare how long they have been unemployed we can see that we are right; its very important to have an early intervention and the best is of course if we can meet people as soon as they have finished their education or while they are still employed.
Also we are trying to respect the choice of the individual, not making it our choice but it's very important that it's the individual's choice. We have made this service so that the person has one contact person it could be the visual consultant or it could be the job consultant but they know there is one person who is going in the project that they can call anytime. And also this person is taking on the job of co-ordinating the effort. This person will co-ordinate all the contacts with the public system, with the school system, with the labour market, so that instead of one person is going to run from one place to another to get information and advice, we do the job together with the person. Because we have a knowledge that it can be very difficult for the individual to check out all the possibilities and also it demands a lot of strength and force for the individual to succeed. We have the point of view that there are no given solutions; we have to leave the possibilities open and then we try together to find the possibilities. In Denmark we are lucky that this kind of job is done by public authorities. It means that for example daily living skills and mobility, you are entitled to have it. There is a waiting list for three to five months in the county of Arhus at present, but you are entitled to it and you will receive it. So this means that when we take people into the project, we can say this is okay and we can go on from this.
We are trying to say that the process of decentralisation that started when this target group entered the Danish ordinary schools and was supported in the ordinary schools shall go on for adults so that they can enter the ordinary labour market in conditions as close to normal conditions as possible. And this also means that we are trying to mainstream our services, but of course in respect of the traditional kind of jobs that are people who are blind or visually impaired are able to maintain.
In our project we find it very important that we are co-ordinating across sectors, across institutions and also across professions so that we can in this way involve all the possibilities from all these areas.
Now, we are at a stage where we think we are going to be a permanent service. Our two departments are talking together about it and we also lucky that we have been extended until the end of June 2000. And this gives us the possibility now to make an external evaluation. It gives us the possibility of writing manuals to benefit ourselves and the target group but also to benefit the job in the counties. We will write a manual and then a handbook which can be used for other counties in Denmark.
I would like to give you a short description of the results of the project. We have during the last four years, in the former project and in this project, been in contact with about 120 persons, half who are employed and half who are unemployed. In this project, we have been in contact with about 45 persons and in the labour market network we have had eleven job retention cases and nine are still employed. Two are receiving benefits. In the job integration part we have been in contact with about nine persons and you can see a difference between the labour market network project and the job integration project and that difference comes from the fact that in the labour market network project were people who were unemployed or who were receiving benefits before we met them. That means that they were not so close to the labour markets as the people who are now in the job integration project. These people have recently been unemployed or have recently received an education. After the project ends in the end of June there will be very few of these persons who will be unemployed. They will have entered into education and we will still have the opportunity to follow them during their education and to help them afterwards to get into employment or they will be employed in normal conditions or in flexible jobs. So when we met recently and we were looking at the results we were very pleasantly surprised.
Working in this kind of project is a balance between sectors, between institutions, between different kind of projects and also helping the project participant to find the right choice.
Now I would like to introduce Peter, who is an insurance specialist.
Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to share with you how my personal and professional life was turned completely upside down as the result of a visual handicap. After 21 years a diabetes patient, I was suddenly faced with visual problems. Until a year ago, my vision was perfect and my career in the Danish bank was very satisfactory. In February this year I got a new job as an insurance agent and I climbed another rung of the career ladder. My most important tool was my lap-top computer and my driver's licence which enabled me to call my clients in their home. Only three weeks later my vision problems became very very serious. My visual reserve was down to about 20%. I was granted sick leave and my personal crisis began. My first decision was to apply for early retirement because I was very confused about my situation. However, Arhus centre for the visually impaired's Lene Sorensen contacted me immediately and that radically changes my future and my possibilities of carving out a new job for myself with my disability. A meeting was set up with an advisor from the centre for the visually impaired and company service and I was told about the project 'Employment Support Practices for Visually Impaired People'. I was also informed about the support available to help me keep my job.
Company service approached my employer to provide information about visual aids support screens, etc.
Last but not least she started a dialogue with my employer which enabled me to keep my job.
I started working again on August 1st this year. Four months have passed now and I enjoy my job and my everyday life. A normal working day in my life is like this:
Around 9 I start working at my office at my home. In my office I have a computer with an extra-large screen. The application 'zoom text' is installed on my computer and allows me to blow up the text as much as I need to. If I did not have 'zoom text' I would not be able to hold down my job. I have one client meeting a day, five days a week. A chauffeur, as personal assistant to me, has been hired to drive me to my client's home. I also bring a laptop computer to my client's on which 'zoom text' has been installed too. I have worried a lot about how to tell my clients that I have a visual handicap. As it turned out, I had no reason to worry about that. My clients are pleased for me, that I have been able to hold down my job.
After a test period, I am now headed for a flex-job.
My visual reserve is now about 5%. A fantastic employer, and indispensable assistance and support from the centre for the visually impaired and company service has meant everything to me in my life. My everyday life, personally and professionally, has turned into a success and I hope that others in the same situation will be offered the same help that I was. That's the best solution for everybody.
Thank you for listening.
Emer Mulhall, Project Administrator
My name is Emer Mulhall and I work as administrator on the Horizon project for the National Council for the Blind of Ireland (NCBI). NCBI, a not for profit organisation, is the primary service provider to people with a visual impairment in the republic of Ireland. The services we provide include a low vision clinic, social work, counselling, advice, library, technology provision and support, information and equipment resource centre, rehabilitation, work-skills training and now an employment support service.
There is a high unemployment rate among visually impaired people in Ireland as elsewhere. Previous employment support services for this group concentrated mainly on their adaptive technology needs. In light of NCBI's own experience, in particular our work in a previous horizon project, and recommendations in statutory and other reports, a need was identified for a multi-disciplinary employment support service, which would cater for a wide range of complex employment needs for people of all abilities. This project aimed to develop and provide such a service. We hope that this service will create a work environment, which is more accessible both physically and socially We believe that the development and provision of this multi-disciplinary support service which assesses, identifies and responds appropriately to the needs of visually impaired people and employers and provides specialist information, advice and training, on specific issues relating to access to employment, will increased the employment opportunities for people with visual impairment.
The project is jointly managed by Des Kenny, our Chief Executive, and Bláithín Gallagher, Head of European Projects. It has three main strands, research, work with visually impaired people and work with employers. In order to develop this service, it was first essential to identify the range of employment support needs of both visually impaired people and of existing and potential employers. Therefore, extensive research has been conducted as part of this project. Aideen Collard, the research assistant on the project will highlight some issues from the research. A multifaceted employment support service has been developed in response to identified needs. Ann Davis and Denis Daly employment specialists will take you through the main points of this service. Our presentation will be completed by Noel Redmond (job title) who will talk about his experiences in relation to the provision of our employment support service.
AIDEEN COLLARD, Research Assistant
My name is Aideen Collard, Research Assistant and I am going to tell you a little about the research we have carried out under the Project.
The research has been central to the operational side of the Project by identifying the requirements of visually impaired people in accessing employment and translating these needs into an employment support service. The research objectives were twofold: Firstly, to research access to employment for people with a visual impairment and secondly to identify the support needs and attitudes of employers in relation to employing someone with a visual impairment.
Beginning with the first research objective, visually impaired students from Irish Third Level Colleges were interviewed about their perceived difficulties and needs in accessing employment.
When asked what assistance they needed during college in order to make the transition to paid employment, students expressed the following:
When asked about their main fears about entering the Labour Market, students said the following:
The ESU are currently formulating ways of increasing awareness amongst employers of the needs and abilities of people with a visual impairment which my colleague, Anne Davis will tell you more about.
The other focus was on the needs and attitudes of employers in relation to employing someone with a visual impairment served two functions: Firstly to identify the support needs and attitudes of employers and secondly, to provide them with information on the grants and other supports available. Data was obtained from thirty-two employers from a combination of the voluntary, private and semi-state sectors through face-to-face interviews, telephone interviews and postal questionnaires.
With regard to policy and practice, two-thirds of the employers interviewed claimed to have a formal written equal opportunities policy but less than half of these did not deal with the employment of people with disabilities. Nearly all the employers claimed to be aware of the new Employment Equality Act 1998 but would like more information on its implications. This is the first piece of Irish legislation protecting the employment rights of people with disabilities. Encouragingly, some employers mentioned that a particular person in their organisation had been assigned to deal with disability issues generally and monitor developments regarding the new legislation.
Overall, the research has been a very positive exercise serving to inform the NCBI on the services required to assist people with a visual impairment access employment. My colleagues Denis and Anne will speak to you now about the various ways in which the ESU is responding to these needs.
Anne and I are Employment Specialists and we have taken over the running of the operational side of the Employment Support Unit.
The function of our work is twofold:
I am going to explain how we deliver the service to our blind and partially sighted clients and Anne will tell you about the rest of our service.
A visually impaired service user may be referred to the Employment Support Unit via four channels.
The most common method of accessing our services is through the country wide network of NCBI Community based workers who complete a detailed referral form on behalf of their clients. On referral the client is initially set up for a meeting, which can last approximately 1.5 hours.
Initial Interview and Assessment Process:
With a client who is unsure what direction they wish to pursue i.e. a recent school leaver, we would explore options that may narrow down some career avenues that might emerge in the course of the initial interview.
Alternatively, with a client that has a clear direction in what area of employment they are interested in, we can help them to devise an action plan that will enable them to focus their job seeking or training skills to be in a better position to obtain employment.
We also work with clients already in employment who have acquired a visual impairment towards retaining their job.
The client is taken through a detailed interview process, which will explore their:
This action plan may consist of:
Example:
Two visually impaired clients were interested attending a European Computer Driving Licence course at a mainstream training centre.
A demonstration with a laptop and JAWS by a technology advisor from the Technical Support Unit who himself happens to be blind, was undertaken to demonstrate to the instructor how a visually impaired individual might access a mainstream course.
After this demonstration it was agreed that with some preparation and a familiarisation process this course would be accessible to the two clients.
The instructor was more confident in teaching these clients and particularly liked the suggestion of having a preliminarily bridging course that will run with the clients for two afternoons a week for about 4 weeks prior to the course proper starting.
It was felt that with this introductory period any difficulties encountered could be resolved. The instructor would become familiar with the specific needs of the visually impaired users. The visually impaired clients could have the assistance of their community based staff to familiarise themselves with the training centre, their workstation and the adaptive software that they will be using.
High and Low Technology Resources:
In response to our clients needs we have developed a Resource pool which consists of both Low and High Technology equipment that is made available to the clients. The resources include:
Software packages include:
Low Technology Equipment may include:
All of this equipment can be loaned to people that are in the process of obtaining a grant from various sources and who need it immediately to access training or employment. Software such as JAWS may be loaned to a client for the duration of a course and when the course is completed software is uninstalled and given to another service user.
Alternatively this resource pool can be used in the workplace to assist a visually impaired client in carrying out their duties more efficiently.
I will now hand you over to Anne who will explain to you more about or services.
An important aspect of the work of the Employment Support Unit is the way it integrates into the rest of NCBI's services. Essentially, we co-ordinate the full range of services when it comes to an employment situation.
So, as you know from Denis, we work very closely with the Technical Support Unit.
They provide technical assessments for our clients, advising them on the best equipment for them to use in the workplace or in training.
They also accompany us to training centres and workplaces to advise trainers and employers and show them just how much is possible with the aid of assistive technology. They also provide training.
We deliver a nationwide service through the NCBI Community Based Staff.
A number of them have undergone specialist training to enable them to carry out the work of the Employment Support Unit on the ground. Of course they are supported in this work by Denis and I and the full range of services at national headquarters.
They:
As you can see the provision of information is a very important part of our job. So we have developed:
One of the key tenets of our service is breaking down stereotypical views of the kinds of jobs that people with a visual impairment can do. With this in mind we have arranged a Role Model Seminar to be held in a central Dublin hotel in January.
We are inviting all of our clients as well as any students with a visual impairment to come to meet and listen to a selection of blind and partially sighted people who are successfully working in as wide a range of careers as possible.
We are also developing a pilot job skills course to help our clients with the basics of job seeking. This will be able to be replicated by the Community Based Staff on an on-going basis.
The other main aspect of our work is liaising directly with both employers and trainers of people with a visual impairment.
At the request of our client or their community resource worker, we meet with their employer or trainer at their workplace and arrange to provide them with whatever supports they require to enable them to integrate our client into their environment as successfully as possible.
We provide awareness training on:
We also arrange for any technical support and training to do with the assistive technology.
I'm not going to talk any more about our service to clients and employers, because Noel Redmond as a service user can give you a much better picture of how it works in reality.
My name is Noel Redmond, and I presently work with a company called Creative Labs who make and manufacture computer components. I was a student in computers for three years; I studied computer applications for a year, and then for the following two I studied computer technology and programming. I went to the job support unit when a contract I was working on ended and we sat down and discussed what options were available for me, what jobs were available and what I wanted to do. At the job we presently work at, I'm a Technical Support Agent. I support multimedia products for computers, for example, sound cards and CD ROMS.
When I went to the company the problems which the company outlined to us were mobility, being able to get to work, and what they would have to do around their company premises for me.
It didn't seem much of a problem, a couple of visits to the company allayed any concerns, which they had, and any concerns which I had. We asked the company to issue a statement on their behalf that we could give to you about what they got from the Employment Support Unit.
What the company said was, they would like to first acknowledge that I had the technical ability for the job and this did enable me to perform as well as anybody else on the job and become a strong member of the team I work on which supports the U.K. Issues for the company related to Health and Safety and what the company had to do in a busy plant to make the environment accessible for me and two main issues which came up for the company were that in the premises around the company, all the hedges had to be trimmed and then all the walkways, passageways within and around the company had to be kept clear and accessible, and that was it. Thankyou very much.
By Kate Storrow And Frances Mcmanus
Ladies and Gentlemen, good afternoon. Firstly may I on behalf of my colleagues from RNIB here today, thank you for your attendance at this conference. My name is Kate Storrow; I work as an Education and Employment Manager for RNIB responsible for the geographical areas of Scotland and Northern Ireland. In addition I also manage the current HORIZON Project VISAGE which stands for Visual Impairment and Standards in Adult Guidance and Employment.
VISAGE Project's Co-ordinator, Frances McManus, will be sharing this short presentation.
I would like firstly to introduce RNIB to you. The Royal National Institute for the Blind known as RNIB has been in existence for over 130 years, as many of you might be aware. Our vision is for a world in which people with a visual impairment enjoy the same rights, freedoms, responsibilities and quality of life as people who are fully sighted.
We are an organisation committed to providing help and support for blind and partially sighted people in Britain. We provide more than 60 distinct services to visually impaired people and their relatives. We actively campaign for the elimination of discrimination and, with other professionals, work towards the prevention of blindness. There are currently over 2800 full time staff employed by RNIB all over the four countries of the UK. Just to say, by way of a short explanation, the move towards devolving parliamentary power in the UK to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland is also being followed by RNIB. RNIB Scotland is an integral part of RNIB but will, from April 2000, be responsible for developing more services in Scotland for visually impaired people.
RNIB as I have already said, has over 60 services aimed at visually impaired people in the UK, but we couldn't do it without people. We couldn't do it without the continued support of the public, who donate so generously throughout the UK, and we couldn't do it without the staff who put in so much time as well.
As we move towards the 21st Century, exciting developments in technology, research, employment practices and legislation - to name but a few, suggest the future is looking somewhat brighter for blind and partially sighted people in the new millennium in Britain.
Before going into some more detail regarding VISAGE, I want to give you a short introduction into the background to the project.
A number of pieces of research conducted by RNIB have shown that blind and partially sighted people face difficulties and barriers every day in their efforts to secure or remain in employment. Employers too, we can see from research, are as yet failing to employ people with a visual impairment in significant numbers.
Further, most unemployed people with sight loss lose their job within 6 months of onset of the visual impairment. A clear indication that job retention policies are either non-existent or failing.
Clear gaps in vocational guidance provision for blind and partially sighted people were also identified by RNIB. Access to such services is low for this group and the quality of guidance is varied across the country.
Thus the HORIZON project aims to improve the quality of guidance received by visually impaired people in the UK.
The VISAGE team is made up of professional RNIB staff from across the UK. Included are Employment Specialists, Student Advisers, Technical Consultants, small business professionals, Information Officers and European Unit staff. We are also working with two other organisations in the UK to fulfil our project aims. They are the Guidance Council and Mencap - the UK's leading organisation working with people with a learning disability.
I'll go through some key project aims now. In the UK, sight loss is one of the most common causes of disability. There are 90,000 blind and partially sighted people of working age in the UK and, as we have seen, the rate of unemployment for this group is a staggering 75%.
VISAGE aims to improve the employment prospects of blind and partially sighted adults. We are striving towards an inclusive workforce with employment support for all who require it.
RNIB hopes that the resources and services developed by the VISAGE team will make a real difference in opening up a number of opportunities for blind and partially sighted people in both the guidance and employment sphere.
Without doubt, new UK legislation, in the shape of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, will change the situation for the better. Jobs, services and transport will be accessible to all. Discrimination against people with a disability will be outlawed.
I want to briefly go through some key project objectives. The Vocational Guidance Handbook, the establishment of Employers' Website and Helpline, and a number of others.
I will now hand over to Frances McManus, VISAGE Project Co-ordinator who will go into more detail in relation to the actual project outputs.
I want to talk to you about two key objectives of VISAGE; the Vocational Guidance Handbook- Standards in Vocational Guidance for People with a Visual Impairment and the VISAGE Employers' Website and Helpline.
Firstly, VISAGE research into vocational guidance services for blind and partially sighted people in the UK highlighted a number of issues for concern. Services varied in quality and quantity throughout the country and guidance professionals told us that they lacked: specialist information, an awareness of the issues surrounding visual impairment, sources of practical assistance and specialist training. This prevented them from providing an equal and high quality service for blind and partially sighted people.
Based on the responses, and requests, of guidance workers, the content of the handbook includes the following: The development of adult guidance in the UK, different methods adopted across the country, the specific needs of blind and partially sighted job seekers AND RNIB's vocational guidance procedures. We also included built environment, assessment and psychometric testing.
Also presented in the handbook are the Quality Standards developed by the Guidance Council. RNIB built on their work by drawing up Best Practice Guidelines covering all aspects of the guidance process, which complement the Standards and these are also presented.
The strong hope is that this resource will help improve accessibility to guidance (and related employment-support services) for blind and partially sighted people. We should see an improvement in the quality of services and, hopefully, a change in attitude toward the vocational capabilities of people with a visual impairment.
With the first draft of the Handbook completed, the piloting phase began. This was a UK-wide exercise conducted with careers service staff, further and higher education teachers, RNIB professionals and other guidance practitioners. They completed a detailed questionnaire and were interviewed by VISAGE staff. A mountain of information was collated, the team took on board every single comment and efforts were made to address all of these in the editing phase.
Indeed, final editing of the Handbook commenced in October of this year and, in line with the pilot findings, improvements were made in layout and content. A further examination of national and European standards in employment support practices has been conducted and we hope to include examples of good practice in every country in the UK, and across Europe, in the Handbook too.
So, after a year in the making, the Handbook is ready to go! It will be produced in a number of formats including paper (large print); disk; CD-ROM and Braille. It will also be accessible on RNIB's website from early 2000.
Word has spread through adult guidance networks in the UK, and through our own dissemination exercises, about the benefits of this resource. It will be provided free to professionals in the guidance sector and several hundred are likely to be distributed early in the New Year.
Looking to the future for this resource, the potential for development is significant. We know, from comments made by guidance workers that they need such specialist resources. We are addressing this need, filling the gap.
RNIB could develop a training manual for staff across all sectors, a resource including information on ALL types of services for blind and partially sighted people, possibly bringing together health, rehabilitation, ES professionals and others. There is also a demand for similar manuals relating to other disabilities. For example, our partners MENCAP are likely to produce a handbook for professionals delivering guidance services to people with a learning disability. RNIB will continue to share ideas and joint working initiatives with our partners in the coming months.
Now I would like to read to you some of the comments made by guidance workers during the piloting of this Handbook. I think they will show clearly enough just how significant this resource will be for professionals and how it can only improve services.
These, of course, are only some of many comments:
I think you'll agree, all very encouraging and supportive of the work of VISAGE!
I would now like to move on to talk about another key VISAGE objective:
RNIB, and other research, has shown that in the UK individuals who are blind or partially sighted are considered by employers to be the hardest group of people to employ. When employing someone with a visual impairment, employers cite difficulties in recruitment, travel, use of specialist equipment, health and safety issues and sickness or absence, among others.
In reality, we know that none of these factors need prevent a blind or partially sighted person from being employed. These, and other, perceived difficulties can be overcome quite simply.
For example, recruitment literature can be easily made accessible. Travel and equipment costs can be subsidised by government.
A dramatic change of attitude is required by employers in the UK. Kate mentioned, with the implementation of the Disability Discrimination Act, employers will have no choice but to make the reasonable adjustments required by law, to make services and employment opportunities, accessible to all.
The Website and Helpline was launched by, the now First Minister for Scotland, Rt. Hon Donald Dewar, MP and MSP, in March of this year. It is an innovative resource for employers considering, or currently employing, someone with a visual impairment. It offers information, advice and practical support for them on a wide range of employment-related issues. Job seekers and employees are also making use of the service, which we are delighted about. The contents are too much to go into today but we can offer advice on all aspects of employment, such as on recruitment, job retention, relevant legislation and real-life experiences of blind or partially sighted employees. All visitors are able to make comments and share information on the Bulletin Board. To date the feedback has been very positive and we'll look at some of those comments in a moment.
To back up the Website, an Employers' Telephone Helpline has been set up...and it's free! If visitors to the Website require more information, or they would simply prefer to talk to another human being, they can simply pick up the phone. We will point callers in the direction of the most appropriate professionals, and services, within the organisation, and externally.
The service was launched on 8 March 1999 by the Rt. Hon Donald Dewar, MP, MSP, now First Minister for Scotland. Since then there have been more than 4000 visits to the Website. That is an average of 500 visits a month! Not bad for a new service!
The number of people using the Helpline is lower than those visiting the Website. This was to be expected, as for those with the technology, it is often quicker and simpler to find the information needed online.
To date, there have been around 200 calls to the freephone Helpline service, which we regard as a highly successful outcome. So, with these positive results, what of the future?
In the future, it is likely that the service will be provided on a more permanent basis by RNIB. One option is to link the freephone VISAGE Helpline with RNIB's national Helpline number. Another is to secure funding from an interested private sector company, of whom there are several, British Telecom to name but one.
RNIB recognises that it is imperative to work WITH employers to help them change their attitudes and practices. We expect that this unique and essential service will continue to assist employers in every aspect of their work. Employers after all must play their part in developing and training a rapidly changing workforce. They must be made aware of the capabilities of blind or partially sighted employees and the mutual benefits to be gained in employing someone with a visual impairment. It is time we moved towards an accessible and inclusive labour market.
If I can just blow by own trumpet for a minute, let us look now at some of the comments made by individuals who have visited the Website or called the Helpline. I'll just read some of these to you as I'm conscious of the time.
"It is good that a UK charitable organisation is pioneering such a resource."
"We employers don't know what the specific needs of a blind or partially sighted employee are likely to be. This site is a very good guide."
"Without this service, I would have had no idea that various sources of financial assistance even existed. Thank you."
"Now I know where to get help, including financial help, I can make sure that help gets through to those who need it."
In conclusion, to our French hosts today and to my transnational colleagues I would like to say thank you! You have generously shared your knowledge, skills and experience with me in the past two years. I have learned a great deal from you all and I hope we continue to work together in the next century, building on our partnerships and friendships.
RNIB is rightly very proud of the work of VISAGE and its achievements so far. We have brought some examples of our work today. Outside in the foyer there is an example of the Website - in English and in French - and also some copies of our handbook for you to take away with you, so please feel free! Thank you.
By Bertrand Tessier And Jean-Yves Bouvier
Ladies and gentlemen, colleagues
I would firstly like to thank our partners for having allowed us to organise this conference in this very symbolic place, the UNESCO building.
Before explaining precisely what our interregional support service for visually impaired adults (SIADV) does, a service so new that it does not currently fit into any reglementary framework, we would firstly like to explain to you why it seemed essential to us to create it in 1995.
First of all, like for a lot of specialised establishments, we were in difficulties when there was a question of knowing how to get by in order to deal with the situation of any of the previous users of our two establishments (la Villeneuve and Montéclair) who were trying to get out of a situation in which they were blocked in Orléans, Rennes, Vierzon or Lorient.
In the same way we were groping around in the dark when a company, a company doctor or a welfare officer called us because an employee, a mother, was the victim of an accident involving their sight, and when it was necessary to find an urgent response without having the particular means or method in which to do so.
Finally we were often a bit put out when we met instructors from the AFPA or any other training centre and the people in charge of the Placement and Redeployment MonitoringTeam (EPSR) who told us that they were more than ready to deal with the needs of partially-sighted and blind people but that they could not do so without our help...
And this help, how could we construct it and, worse still, how could we dispense it?
Secondly, when we took a good look, with our colleagues, at what could happen to the young people who were leaving our two establishments in terms of their professional life and notably what they could do as complementary training, what did we see?
Either the University, with all the difficulties that existed to be able to get by there but this option is reserved more for those who were better at their studies than the young people that we know.
Or specific training courses aimed at visually impaired people and run within Professional Rehabilitation Centres. In this case it is a question of very targeted training courses such as the one for telephonist-receptionist, telematics, or at higher levels such as physiotherapists, and for a good while now, programme analysts.
All of these training courses have either rendered excellent service or continue to do so today and should thus be maintained, but our questions focused above all on this range of professions which, everything taken into consideration, remained restricted at a time when technological developments were modifying the stakes and enabled the range of possible directions to be considerably enlarged.
I'm going to speak to you at this point about a very partially sighted boy who became a waiter in a café after having completed a training course and an apprenticeship; of another, by the same channel, who became a baker even though his sight hardly allowed him to get from one place to another; of a blind adult who has recently become a salesman of hi-fi equipment and who today has a permanent contract with a large national chain; but also of a young girl who has become an advisor in Social and Family Economics or of another who did a post A-levels course in Insurance after a rather difficult schooling career, and of Mr. Pipala, here at my side, who will present his experience to you in a few minutes. I thank him very much for having taken up this challenge.
This shows that the field of jobs is open, and that new professions are not only accessible through the channel of training courses provided by training centres or ordinary schools.
All of this means that that which appeared to us to be atypical (a university student who succeeds) has the possibility to grow to unlimited size from the moment when our involvement goes further than the management from A to Z of a specific training course and becomes an action of constructed support, organised help to put together a training project.
From all of this, thus, came the SIADV, based on a few simple notions:
SIADV was thus created to intervene in this very precise space between the skilled visually impaired person and the mainstream training and employment market, to which access is facilitated by Professional Integration and Placement Organisations (OIP) and by the redeployment monitoring teams.
SIADV is funded by AGEFIPH and the European Social Fund. Its mission is to intervene in 20 counties in the regions of Pays de la Loire, Brittany, the Centre, and High and Low Normandy.
The service is provided from three sites:
Those who mainly benefit from the service provision are all those visually impaired people who are beneficiaries of the law dated 18th of July 1987, who are fairly independent in their everyday life, that is to say they can correctly master the "tools" necessary to compensate for their disability (for getting around, for their capacity to organise themselves in their everyday life in the use of techniques which are appropriate to be able to read and write comfortably...
Consequently, those people with a total or very high loss of abilities requiring functional rehabilitation cannot benefit from the service provision because it is not their function to offer intensive functional rehabilitation.
Finally, the service does not act alone; it relies systematically on the local support services for the professional integration of disabled workers. Consequently, if a person or a business contacts the Service directly, it will contribute to putting all the different players concerned by the situation into contact with one another so that these interventions go well in all cases and are complementary to those of the other operators. The field of action of the Service is limited to the situation of visually impaired people who are excluded from employment or who find it necessary to reconsider their qualifications or their job.
I will now hand over to Jean-Yves Bouvier who is going to present to you our five specific functions. So our Service has five functions.
The first function concerns information and awareness. This function is mainly aimed at the different players who act somewhere along the way during the professional integration process of a visually impaired person, notably from the Skills and Vocational Guidance Centre staff to the company doctor and including the preparation teams, the redeployment monitoring teams and the Professional Integration Organisations.
To carry out this function, it consists of us going and explaining the consequences linked to a situation of blindness or of partial-sightedness. It also, especially, consists of us explaining the possibilities that continue to exist in spite of this situation.
Thus the objective is to change the conceptualisation that is sometimes - too often - negative that they may have of visual disability and to promote the potential of blind and partially sighted people. These people are perfectly capable of reaching the same levels of qualifications as sighted people and so can perform in numerous sectors of activity.
The second function deals directly with the visually impaired person and concerns functional assessment. This second function enables us to respond to the frequent demand from visually impaired people, from those who are close to them, from their employer. It means being able to measure with precision the potential of a person, whether it be visual acuity, from close up, from a distance, sensitivity to contrasts, their degree of independence in getting around, their organisation, the management of their everyday life, their ability to carry out certain tasks, their ease in reading and in writing with the different tools that they usually use.
This step constitutes the beginning of a process. It is thus not a skills assessment, which is offered by other services and which can be effectively carried out following the functional assessment. SIADV can also participate (but concerning the adaptation of documents and tools if necessary) in this skills assessment.
The third function corresponds to support in mainstream training. Following the first meetings and the assessment which was carried out and if the need or the request exists, guidance towards a training programme run by a mainstream training centre will be the first choice, and at the request of local integration workers or training instructors and tightly linked to them, the service will intervene in accompanying the user during this training course, helping with or choosing equipment, and if needed, in transcribing into Braille the documents used and in any necessary adaptations.
The fourth function concerns accompaniment and job retention. This is, naturally, the end phase of the actions of the service but it is only carried out as a complement to and in partnership with the different partners, notably the National Employment Agency, the Work Management services, the redeployment preparation and monitoring teams, the integration and placement organisations and, at least right at the beginning, the Technical Commissions for Professional Integration and Redeployment.
Here it concerns intervening when the need makes itself felt in companies to accompany visually impaired people when they are beginning in a job, or to succeed in their being maintained in their job through a readaptation of their workstation when visual impairment first appears and seems to prevent the professional activity from being carried out. In this situation the partnership with the company medicine services are vital.
It also involves monitoring the visually impaired person at his workstation through regular contact or visits to the company if they are requested, and intervention by the ergonomists in our Service.
The fifth and final function corresponds to research and innovation. The Service is committed to use the experience that it acquires over time in terms of visually impaired workers to observe, imagine and design new adaptations. There is currently a research programme dealing with distance learning, through videoconferencing, for example. We are also developing rehabilitative professional software to be able to improve work conditions. The close position of the Service to the types of employment offered to visually impaired people enables it to explore all the possibilities to enlarge the range of positions in companies.
Those are the five functions and I will now hand over to Mr. Pipala, a beneficiary between quotation marks of our Service so that he can give you his point of view of our actions and as for me, I thank you for your attention.
I would like to directly thank Mr. Tessier and his service for having chosen me to come here and speak to you about what was done in my personal situation because 3 times, at 3 important points in my career, I was lead to need the different services of EPSR and SIADV.
Firstly, it was a situation of job retention, then in the framework of a professional training course and finally in the framework of reintegration into a new company.
I became gravely disabled at the end of the 1980s. I lost very nearly all of my detailed vision following a small medical treatment which should not have had this effect and unfortunately I lost this detailed vision. So I had to, with my employer, envisage an eventual redeployment but firstly I had, at any price, to assure the continuation of the computer service that I managed practically on my own. He decided to train someone quickly and at the same time I followed a rehabilitation programme at Marly Le Roi to do functional rehabilitation in order to learn how to make the most of the very little vision that was left to me. Then a file was studied to adapt a workstation so that I could carry out a normal activity in this company again. So we installed an enlarger, a computer linked to a minisystem and, thanks to this computer and an enlarging card I could work in comfortable conditions. We even went to the point of setting up a new office for me so that I could work in the best possible conditions.
All this was done, up until 1996, with the help of Ms. Louis, ergonomist in SIADV so that I could continue that job. In 1996, the headquarters of the company decided on a complete reform of the computer system. I no longer had the skills because we were moving to a computer and server of which I had no knowledge. So we decided unanimously that I would go and follow a training programme to become a programme analyst at the AFPA in Angers. This training course lasted one year with an adapted system. We had two rooms, a classroom and a practical room. So I found myself in surroundings which enabled me to do practical work. In the classroom they adapted a screen and a camera for me in such a way that I was able to follow the lessons on the board and on the overhead projector. So I could do a training course like my 19 other colleagues, and it led to a programme analyst's diploma at the end of 1997.
A new problem at the beginning of 1998, I was back on the labour market and it's a busy market! It can be said today that it is even more difficult for disabled people but I did not hesitate in putting that I worked at an adapted workstation on my CV, noting my skills and the new ones that I had acquired. Three months later, two companies were ready to employ me.
So I had to choose and I opted for the company that proposed work from home as well as work in the company. Working from home enabled me to reduce the amount of travelling and the work in the company enabled me to stay in contact with the professional field. Because it is essential to conserve that contact. I realise it now because I have moved to four days at home and one day in the company: the day goes by very quickly in the company.
So we have adapted two workstations, a workstation at my home and one in the company which are set up in exactly the same way. A removable disk that I take with me contains all my applications and allows me to work comfortably. I also have video magnifiers at the company and at home and a new model that is currently on loan, which enables me to work even more comfortably. All of these means were given to me by the different services EPSR, AGEFIPH and SIADV. That is my experience in general terms. Thank you.
In finishing our presentation, I won't miss the opportunity of highlighting the effectiveness of this partnership that we hope to develop in the years to come with our colleagues who are present here today.
A big thank you to our French team for all the innovative work carried out, without forgetting our interpreter, Cathy Chaussepied. Thank you.
We have made a tour of the European horizon. Before handing over to you so that a discussion can take place with our European partners, I would like one representative from each delegation to come here for the panel discussion later on.
By Kate Storrow And Blaithin Gallagher
Our presentation this afternoon aims to clarify the conclusions on employment support practices for visually impaired people arrived at by the Transnational Partnership subsequent to extensive research undertaken during the two years the partnership has been in existence. We have worked together to produce the document you see before you today.
The full text of our suggested 'Way Forward' and our conclusions can be found in chapter 8 of the report. It is our job today to highlight some key themes, which we believe can be taken forward by national and European governments to improve the employment support practices for visually impaired people throughout Europe.
Social exclusion for visually impaired people throughout the member states of the European Union is a reality. Experiencing a lack of employment opportunities is something the majority of visually impaired people face during their working life. The lack of employment opportunities does lead to a sense of isolation from society.
All the partner organisations represented here today recognise that unemployment rates amongst people with a visual impairment are too high. It has been the role of our partnership to highlight the changes that are required and the issues that must be addressed by individual states and nations within Europe before people with a visual impairment can be included fully into society.
We will identify some of the issues that arise under the five key areas where research was carried out during the work of the transnational project. The themes are not arranged in any particular order.
It is clear from the very high unemployment rates amongst people with a visual impairment throughout Europe that job creation is problematic. Attention must be given to this as a priority. Especially important is promoting the education of employers to ensure opportunities are created.
Creative ways of including people with disabilities in the workforce must be found rather than depending on quota systems and punitive legislative measures that exist in some European countries. We must focus on ability rather than disability.
Too many individuals with a visual impairment leave their jobs at the onset of some deterioration in their vision. The individual then spends a number of years, on average, trying to obtain alternative employment. Retaining people with disabilities in employment should be a priority for employers, state run employment agencies and other support structures. Measures must be developed to ensure that job retention becomes an easier option, i.e. ease of access to adaptive equipment and professional support for both the person with a visual impairment and the employer.
There should be a standard content of vocational guidance throughout the States of Europe. Individual visually impaired people should be able to expect a certain level of quality of provision as a right and be entitled to high quality guidance from appropriately qualified staff. All potential employment options must be identified to the visually impaired person.
A holistic assessment approach should be adopted, which will address individual's skills, aptitudes, interests, motivation and future potential. Successful rehabilitation is essential for job creation, retention, training and placement.
To ensure a consistent professional service to visually impaired people throughout the EU, rehabilitation practitioners should hold a standard recognised qualification.
We identified some other more, general issues relating to employment support practices for visually impaired people outside the key themes but which we feel must be addressed
Future initiatives must be focused on the inclusion of people with a visual impairment in the mainstream workforce.
It is imperative that employment support services are provided on a local/regional basis and that the person with the visual impairment is given an integral role in the employment process.
Partnership working is one of the keys to the future success of employment support services. This Transnational Project is an excellent example of this.
An audit of mainstream training should be undertaken on a national basis to assess their accessibility and suitability for people with a visual impairment.
Each nation should take responsibility in maintaining the high profile of visual impairment issues in the employment arena. At a time when the focus is on "inclusion for all", it may be that visual impairment will move towards the bottom of the agenda if substantial efforts are not made to bring it to notice.
Key workers in mainstream settings must be made aware of disability issues.
Perhaps the time is appropriate to consider a Charter of Rights for people with a disability.
The work of this transnational group has found that successful employment support programmes require partnerships between service users, between workers, between agencies and between nations.
This project has already demonstrated how a group of nations can work together to produce innovative approaches and solutions to the employment difficulties faced by people with a visual impairment.
As the EU follows a policy of 'mainstreaming' initiatives for disabled people, it is particularly important that collaborative, transnational projects such as ESP are supported, in order to share expertise and best practice. They are essential to devise innovative solutions to unequal access to the labour market, the lessons from which can inform the mainstream. With the increasing focus on mainstreaming and "access for all", we must ensure that the inclusion of those with a disability stays high on the agenda.
The Way Forward now for the Partnership is to build upon the work undertaken in 1998 and 1999. The recommendations in this Document will form the basis for future collaboration to improve the employment support practices for people with a visual impairment throughout Europe.
As the European Union insists on following a policy of integrating provision for disabled people into the various initiatives, moving from HORIZON to EQUAL, it is particularly relevant to ensure partnerships like ours are able to continue to focus on the specific employment needs of people with a visual impairment. There is still a danger that the focus on disability can get lost in the mainstreaming process. We must continue to work together to ensure our experiences can inform policy and practice throughout the European Union.
We have come to the moment when we will hand over to you. In front of you is a microphone with a small button on which you press and then speak. It is fairly simple and then your questions will be translated for our European partners. As usual, the first is always the hardest. You can introduce yourself for our partners.
Maurice Beccari, General Secretary of FIS AF, the National Federation for the Professional Integration of the Deaf and the Blind in France.
The first thing I would like to say is not a question. I would like to inform you that FISAF has just had a meeting with Mr. Pascal Terrasse, Member of Parliament for l'Ardche, who was made responsible by Ms. Aubry for relaunching discussion on the reform to the 1975 law dealing with social and medico-social institutions.
We decided to put to him the question of a legislative framework for structures like SIADV, because on the one hand, it seems to me to be the least to be done in order to promote all the work that has already been accomplished up until now and on the other hand, it is to be able to assure the continuation of this work and to make it even more effective.
It is really necessary to ask this question within this framework - it was a piece of information, not a question - so the question I want to ask to all of the five participants in this work is the following:
I am well aware that for any work at a transnational level, before deciding on the common objectives and the common strategies, it is important to define common concepts.
I would like to know how the group went about defining and working on these concepts?
If the task was a difficult one?
How did they resolve this task, which seems to me to be an indispensable prerequisite?
Who would like to reply? Kate, I could say that firstly we have learned to laugh together. Jean-Yves or Bertrand perhaps?
I would like to sketch out the first few elements of a reply, and I will let my colleagues take over afterwards.
Maurice Beccari has obviously asked the question which is preliminary to all transnational work. Yes, it was very complicated, very difficult.
Firstly, it was even more complicated, to be honest, for the French, the SIADV, as it was our first experience.
So we were faced with this work, with this very important learning process. We started off very humbly, because we had to learn and notably to learn to listen to our colleagues, listen to their know-how because most of them had already been involved in other transnational work for a while.
To come back to the precise question, of course we relied on certain concepts that can be found concerning different impairments, on the concepts of the World Health Organisation and on national concepts in which we looked for common points.
I can quote at least one anecdote: a handicapped person - and I use the term 'handicapped' - you all know that handicaps as such do not exist in English-speaking countries because they refer to the disadvantaged. The disadvantaged would no doubt therefore be a much more appropriate terminology. No doubt we have work to do on that, perhaps the future law will use this terminology. I dare to hope that the result, at least the first result today, will show us that we have nevertheless succeeded in agreeing and in publishing a document together. So we have made a lot of progress. There is still, as I was saying before, a lot of work to do over and above the difficulties that we have already faced to decode the semantics. I believe that what is essential, as Loc emphasised, is that we can now laugh together, even if things are effectively still complicated on the professional level. With our colleagues at SIADV, we have seen a lot of progress. I remember, and no doubt Blaithin remembers, that we have had some very strong moments of incomprehension, and I believe that today we have largely overcome that.
We refer to those as linguistic and cultural differences, which we have overcome, I believe, to a great extent.
I think the partnership has come a long way and it was certainly a very difficult first few months, but something wonderful has come of it and we do intend to work on some future collaboration because it would be an awful shame to lose the great expertise and experience that has been gained by our two years' working together. Kate, do you have anything to add?
I think the important thing for the partnership was when we defined our key themes; we actually sat down and agreed a definition of what they meant, and that was quite difficult because 'vocational guidance' or 'professional training' maybe meant different things in Italy than in Britain, but we came to a consensus, and we worked together on a consensus, and I think the important thing was that we talked to each other, we tried to email each other - that didn't always work- but we did try, and we did spend time with each other and understood each other, and I think that was very important.
When I work with a blind person I teach him to touch things because when you touch something you understand it. We were travelling a lot during the project, we'd go in to the 'house' of the different people, and we'd touch the things, and when we touch it, we understand it, so a lot of different concepts I understood during the meal in the evening, discussing with the blind participants what rehabilitation means, because I see them eat, I see them walking around, I see them dancing, and so it was much easier to understand that in the end we were all talking about the same things with different words. And then, there exists new technology, so we can have videoconferences, but I think it's important to go to everyone's country and to see how he is working to understand what he means.
One aspect of this partnership is that everyone in the partnership has been working very seriously, and although we have been different, especially in the beginning, we have never been in doubt that every one of these partners were working seriously and were taking this partnership seriously. So it's also a question of believing in the other partners and having trust, and then being ready to move your own point of view, too.
I would believe also that the social events lead to a greater understanding between us, because we did become friends through the social events and misunderstandings during the day came out at dinner and were passed around the table and then suddenly it twigged what everyone was talking about, so they were a very important part of the building of the partnership - hard work!
Good afternoon, Samuel Landier, administrator of the Blind Crusade I would like to ask a question that concerns computer equipment and specific adaptations that are used to be able to have access to a workstation.
Are there assessment structures or testing grounds reserved intrinsically for specific equipment in relation to message banks or market software used in companies in the other European countries?
In the U.K. the State-run organisation would help in the assessment process when providing computer equipment. R.N.I.B. - my organisation - would be involved in that assessment process and we would be able to assess the individual, assess the type of computer programme, the hardware and the software, and also assess what training needs, maybe some ergonomic needs, lighting, all those sorts of issues, and we would be involved in that process. Because everybody is an individual, although we have guidelines on what constitutes an assessment, each assessment is different because it focuses on the individual's needs.
At the National Council for the Blind of Ireland, our service is aimed to be multidisciplinary, and we have Technology Advisers as well as Low Vision Specialists and Employment Specialists, who work together to work together to make sure that the employment environment is as ergonomically suitable as is possible. We would depend on our Technology Advisors to do the assessments, and also to make sure that the technological equipment that is provided is suitable for the person that it is provided to.
In Denmark, a part of the project is to make the assessment and relate it to the concrete job or the concrete studies and it's a Vision Consultant from the County Resource Centre who does this kind of job. Where we see the problem is that the computer programme, JAWS, is having problems if, for example, people want to work as computer programmers, JAWS can't communicate everything. Some of it can be done by reprogramming it but it's a difficult task to do and we have only a few persons in Denmark who can do it. It's an area where we should put more focus, develop a better programme, perhaps.
I want to add that in Italy, for two years we have had a so-called Discussion List on the Internet, we have two now which discuss problems concerning visually impairment and blindness. One of them is a technical Discussion List so all of those who are blind and visually impaired and using technical aids take part in this Discussion List and they discuss all the problems and solutions so they make an auto-evaluation of the technology that they use in the work place or at school, and I think it' s a very good idea to build up Discussion Lists by email for the blind and visually impaired.
Last information is that the Italian Blind Union participate in the European Project called Cyberkiosk, I think it's promoted also by the European Blind Union, and I think that each organisation has other projects concerning technical aids and the Internet, and each organisation has tried to use the knowledge gained from this project in their other projects.
Good afternoon, Thierry Gauthier of the Blind or Partially Sighted Intellectuals Group.
This morning I heard - I think it was Ms. Bachelot who said - that it would be necessary to leave some opportunities for free experimentation, the lack of legal statute for SIADV, for example.
In the other countries, is free experimentation allowed?
I am thinking mainly about all attempts at trying, because I am a bit concerned, to invent one's own manner of working outside of the classic circuit which would be that of the company and that of sheltered workplaces.Are there attempts in terms of teleworking for visually disabled people in your countries?
RNIB is fortunate in that it has the ability to develop innovative projects like the ones we've been talking about today and we've had quite a lot of experience in running telematic projects as well. We have a framework that we work within but I'm fortunate -I'm talking from a personal experience here - that if we can identify a good reason why we need to have services and a new way of working then we have the ability to maybe go out and develop that. Teleworking is very popular at the moment and we are working very closely with Call Centres, that's what they're known as in the UK as an employment option for visually impaired people. So as new developments happen we are able to address those issues. Unfortunately I don't have as much experience on the telematic side of it, but I can put you in touch with somebody if you want to speak about RNIB's previous experience in that field.
In Denmark, teleworking is not so common at this time, but the National Institute for the Blind and Partially Sighted in Copenhagen has got EU funding for developing a project about telemarketing. I know that they have had good results with it and that people, after having this education, are self-employed.
At the National Council for the Blind, we are only partially funded from statutory sources, which gives us the opportunity to try to develop pilot projects, and we usually try and look for something like the EU funding to develop such programmes. Teleworking for visually impaired people is a relatively new concept in Ireland, but our employment team are looking at it as a future source of employment for visually impaired people, and we have been involved in a number of telematics projects as well.
I want to talk about a project we ran two years ago. It was a training course for sighted and blind people to become a specialist in doing research on a data base for legal sentences - all the processes were registered on the data base and they can do by teleworking research for judges, on this kind of data base, so the advocate is asked for special research on a sentence when the judgement is made. All the judgements are registered and they can do research. It was a training course for sighted and blind people - a so-called integrated professional training course. In this training course there were a lot of hours for distance learning.
Concerning the different organisations in which you work, each one of the European partners, what is your administrative and legislative framework ? Is there public funding with carefully targeted source or on the contrary a relatively wide range of sources?
RNIB is a charity, so it doesn't make any profits; all the profits go back into the organisation. We are funded through donations, through legacies, through public funding as well, through schools and the education services we provide, and grants for services that we provide, so it's a mixture of a lot of different types of funding as well, so we're not just publicly funded, we have a mixture of 5 or 6 different groups of funding that we receive.
The National Council for the Blind of Ireland is also a not-for-profit organisation. We hold the register of visually impaired people in Ireland on behalf of the Department of Health, and we receive approximately 50% of our funding now from statutory sources. The rest of our funding comes from fundraising. We organise events to raise money, we also depend a lot on voluntary donations and legacies and also the EU funds help us develop pilot projects, as I said earlier.
Did you receive this booklet? Some of your question can be answered by reading this booklet because inside we have given some information about the situation in different countries. If this information is not enough, this is an abstract. Behind this booklet, we have created about 400 pages of national reports where every nation explains how they get money, what the law is, so if you want to read this information you can find it on the Internet, on the Website that Egon showed you this morning, so I hope that in one or two weeks all our information will be on the Website, in English, Italian, Danish and French.
I would like to inform you about the Danish system because it's different. In Denmark it's stated by law that all services that you receive are to be public funded. For example, orientation, mobility, daily living skills, computer courses, assessment, are paid for by the government, or by the municipality, but it is public funded. And also, the two institutions who are together in this project, the County Resource Centre for the Blind and Visually Impaired and the Rehabilitation Clinic, are public funded, by the County. So normally we don't have extra funding. When we apply for funding, it's for the development of new initiatives, so that we can see, when we get an idea that this could be a good new service, there is no money for it in the ordinary system, but this can help us develop it and test it and if it succeeds, like this project, then we will make it a permanent offer.
Francis Boé, President of the Group of Teachers and Rehabilitation Workers for Blind and Partially Sighted Children.
In the conclusions and the Way Forward, there is a lot of data.
I would like to ask a question in relation to one piece of data to do with rehabilitation and assessment. In relation to the assessment of people, not a visual assessment, but an assessment of people and their abilities, have you considered, developed common criteria in relation to all the countries in such a way as to be able to assess the same thing at the same time?
Have you considered common criteria or do you intend to consider them and of course to pass them on?
At the National Council for the Blind, this Employment Support Service has been developed in response to needs identified by the research of the project, and one of those things has been that a holistic approach must be taken to the assessment of the person seeking employment, and that's what we're here to deal with today, so for our other services we would tend always to have looked at the holistic situation, but for the Employment Support Unit we bring in the Employment Specialist, the Low Vision Specialist, the Technologist, the Rehabilitation Specialist, if there is counselling needed... all of that is taken into account when we're doing our assessments.
I would say we do it the same way in Denmark, but of course we don't assess in the same way, it's related to the context of the country, but what I would like to have the possibility to do would be to give people a career service so that, if you have a car, after every 10000 km you call it in and ask what do I have to do to make this function the best way possible. I would like, if we had the opportunity, to offer this to people to help them. Also because sometimes you are not aware of the existence of new technological change that you can benefit from, so I would like to do this.
Francis Boe' question, the transnational question, on research into functional assessment, is a question which preoccupies us, on which we have worked.
We realised, country by country, and I am speaking here especially for France of course, that there was still a lot of work to be done in order to be able to find a certain number of common criteria for assessment. Concerning SIADV, we have worked within different teams on common assessment grids whether they be for blind or partially-sighted people. We are continuing to work on these grids at the same time in France within the framework of a task that we have simply set into motion for the moment with other services for adults which were created afterwards and which met in Angers a few weeks ago. We have touched on this first theme, we will touch on others. Concerning the adult sector, I would like to say that we also participate, of course, with all the colleagues at the level of other establishments on quality measures lead by the initiative of FISAF.
Maurice Beccari will speak just afterwards, so it is significant and necessary work which must quickly be refined, firstly in France and of course at a European level afterwards.
Like the other organisations represented here we obviously have particular ways that we would carry out assessments and use particular tools. I think what Bertrand said is very true, it's difficult to standardise that throughout Europe when it's not actually standard in your own country yet. I think that is what all organisations have to work towards. We are working in the guidance field at the moment to try to adopt UK-wide standards, so that the guidance that we would provide would be the same as other organisations because we adhere to those standards, and its only by doing that that we will then improve the quality of our services and then maybe look at European-wide standards so that everybody could have the same level of guidance as each other country. I think we have to do it in the UK first, and in all our countries, and then we can develop on a European basis.
I only want to add that it's a very big problem, the standardisation of functional assessment. For example, in the field of mobility, the educational programme for professionals, it's been twelve years that they have been working for European standards, and we don't have it yet, after twelve years of work, so I think its very important to start on a national level, to find a national standard of how to do evaluation and assessment, and then try to find common points. At the moment, for example, in Italy, we don't have a lot of knowledge about this because we started with mobility ten years ago, and daily living skills seven years ago, with low vision assessment two years ago, so we have few operators and separate knowledge; we don't have a national standard, so for us it's important to have a national standard and then look at the European level.
A number of the partners involved in this project are also involved in another project under Leonardo called VITAES which is looking to develop an accredited training programme for employment specialists working throughout Europe with visually impaired people, and that will, we hope, bring some standard to employment guidance.
I simply wanted to say that our benefits system in France, for adults notably, does not really incite people to look for employment, notably for those with a low level of qualifications. I would like to know what the system is in the neighbouring countries and if this system is as little encouraging for people to work notably for the visually impaired?
Up until the last government came to power there seems to be a great benefit trap, there's no motivation for individuals to come off state benefits and to go into employment. Our current government have brought in a programme called Welfare to Work and basically what they are saying is that those people that can work should work. We still haven't seen the full development of that, it has just been piloted in some areas, and with people with disabilities it is still fairly embryonic, but I think that's the movement it will be in the UK, that those people who can work will have to work, otherwise they will lose their benefits. As far as RNIB is concerned, we are campaigning to ensure that those individuals who need benefits and cannot work should not be penalised in any way for that.
In Denmark it is possible to receive quite high benefits, but I think that for most people, they want to be like everybody else, and I think for most people a part of quality of life is to have work, to have the experience with colleagues, to do just the same as everyone else. Like we do in Denmark, with companies, we try to motivate people.
If you open the labour market to everyone and give people the possibility of choices, so that they can follow their abilities and their wishes, instead of just having to take certain types of jobs, then I think that young people in the school system will be motivated to have their wish to join the labour market and that's where we should start.
I think every partner has a mission for the year 2000, and the mission for Italy is this problem, to go out from the protected labour market and to motivate the blind to work. This morning I said that we have 2% of unemployed visually impaired people. We have 10% of employed visually impaired people, that means that we have 88% of visually impaired people that we don't know what they do, but they get money. 90% of the 10% that are working work in the protected labour market. So our big mission for the year 2000 is to find new motivation, to find non-protected work in the normal labour market.
Just a reminder that we have distributed an evaluation questionnaire. Please do not forget to fill in this questionnaire and to leave it at the reception desk before the end of the day. Thank you very much.
We are running 10 minutes late, and we must try to catch it up to finish as closely as possible to 5pm.
So please find your places quickly, and we will hear from Ms. Fazilet Hadi, the Director of Policy at RNIB.
By Ms. Fazilet Hadi, Director Of Policy At Rnib.
Good afternoon, my name is Fazilet Hadi and I'm the Director of Policy at RNIB. Could I thank you for me inviting me here and congratulate all the participants in the project for the excellent work that's being done, both in the individual countries and across the nations.
I just want to talk briefly today and share some thoughts with you about the place of international working in our fight to improve quality of life for people who are blind or partially sighted. I'm going to cover four headings : the first is the integration of international and national objectives and work, the second is the need to develop principles for international work, the third area is around why it is important that we work across boundaries internationally and, finally, I will talk a bit about what I think the factors are for successful international working.
So let me begin by just talking about the need to integrate international and national work. Many of you will be working in your countries for improvement in conditions for people who are blind or partially sighted, and I think its very very crucial that the international dimension of your work is strongly linked to your national goals. There is no point in having two, separate, parallel processes; they must be linked. As Kate said earlier, the RNIB has a clear vision. It wants a world where people who are blind or partially sighted have a better life, and it has clear ideas on how to achieve this. This is firstly by giving the people themselves the skills and the knowledge and the services they need to lead their own lives and make their own choices, and the second way is by changing society by attacking prejudice, by dismantling the barriers that people face that should not be there. So it's very important we have this shared starting point and that all our work within the UK, whether it's national or international, supports these goals. And I think that we are very clear at RNIB that to achieve our goals in the world of today we must work in Europe and internationally. This can be lots of different levels; it can be at the strategic level, it can be just colleagues working together, but it must be integrated at all levels.
The second issue I want to talk about is developing principals for international work. At RNIB, about a year ago, we started trying to identify what our principles of international working were because it's very important that people are clear why we're working internationally. We don't want people to just think that we're going abroad to have a good time and to party; it's important that we do proper work and achieve outcomes. We sat down and we thought about what our principles were. Because we have a Royal charter in the UK, everything the RNIB does has to benefit visually impaired people in the UK, so that's very important for us, that our international work benefits people in the UK. The second thing that's very important is that visually impaired people in the UK, like everyone else, have a right to travel in the world, to work in other countries in the world, to do business across the world, and for us to help them to do this we need to work internationally. We also decided that our work should help other people - visually impaired people - outside the UK, but we had to take the decision that this would be a very very small part of our work. Most of the work we do has to bring benefits back to people in the UK. I don't think this is a problem because often what helps visually impaired people in one country will help visually impaired people in all countries.
We do this international work in many ways. As you've heard today we participate in projects like this project on Employment Support Practices. We're involved in networks like the European Blind Union. We have partnerships with organisations in other countries on particular projects, so we do our international work in many many ways.
The third area I want to talk about is the importance of international work. I'm sure all of you are aware that the world is a very very small place now. Anyone can email anyone else, anyone can get on an aeroplane, and there are some things that we cannot do within our own countries anymore. I'd like to give you some ideas about the types of things we need to work internationally on to make change. Obviously we've heard about a project today which shares good practice, but there are other things that are important. For example, if we want to influence European policy its no good just doing that from the UK or just doing that from France or just doing that from Denmark; we must all do it together. Another example at the world level, if we want to affect certain decisions that are to do with technology at the world level, we have to work together. Some examples of where RNIB is working at the moment which are vital to our work : the first is trying to influence the technology that is used on the world-wide web, so that we can try and ensure that visually impaired people in the UK can have access to the Internet.
We can't do this alone, we have to do this with others. Another example is trying to fight for better copyright laws, so that visually impaired people can read books in Braille, tape, when other people read them in print. We can't do this at the UK level only, we have to fight in Europe. So there's many many areas now, whether its transport, where satellite systems for helping visually impaired people to find their way are being developed, inaccessible information; everything that touches the lives of visually impaired people now, more and more, is being developed at the international level.
My fourth area that I wanted to say a few words about is the factors which we need to look at if international working is to be successful. As we've all heard today, there was a lot of hard work in the project, that we've just been hearing about, and I'm sure that people are very tired now, as well, so even today shows what hard work it is. But let me just go through a few headings for the things I think we need to think about if our international work is to be of good quality. The first is having clear objectives. They don't always have to be the same, but if they're not the same, they have to be complementary, and we heard earlier today about how important it was that the ESP project actually understood each other's objectives, and tried to find some common ground.
The second factor we have to pay attention to is the issue about how we work across cultures, and again this has been raised today. It isn't just about language, it's about how we work differently in different countries, and I think to work effectively at the international level we all have to respect each other and maybe learn different ways of doing things because our ways aren't necessarily always right, even though we're used to them.
The third very important factor is the management of the work we're involved in. We all know how difficult it is to manage projects and people when they're working in the next-door office, but when they're spread across the globe, the challenges are much much greater, and we have to be very proactive in making sure that things are happening, that they're happening on time, that the outcomes are being produced, and that people are reporting back to each other. I think we shouldn't underestimate the management skills involved in making a successful international project.
The fourth thing I was going to touch on is personal qualities. My colleagues will laugh because I don't think that I am a very good international worker because I'm very impatient, but I think to work successfully internationally, one does have to have some patience, a lot of diplomacy, and as a colleague of mine said to me yesterday, a sense of humour.
And these personal qualities are very important, and we've also heard today how important the social aspects of the project were, and I think this is because you can then develop these personal relationships which help you to work more effectively.
The fifth thing I'd like to touch on is communication with each other but also back into the countries we're working from. It's great to have a good international project but we must sell the results back in our own countries, we mustn't keep the work a secret, we must disseminate the results and we must bring them to the attention of our colleagues in our own countries. Producing a book is not the end of the work, that is just another beginning.
For me, a very important factor in international working must be the involvement of visually impaired people themselves, and I think we do have some way to go here, I think we need to learn how to involve visually impaired people in the planning and the monitoring of the projects. Of course, we want visually impaired people to benefit from the project, but that isn't enough. Visually impaired people must be part of the development and review of the project process, and I think this will have to happen more and more over the next few years.
The final point I'd like to make in talking about successful working is really about accountability. I think that not only do we need to be accountable to each other, the partners in the project, we need to be accountable to visually impaired people. I must say that when I joined RNIB 2 and a half years ago, I had no idea that any of this took place. Sitting in the UK, I didn't know that people went off to conferences, and talked to each other - the news did not reach me. And somehow we have got to find a way of making what we do in these forums more accountable to the ordinary visually impaired person who is interested. Obviously not everyone is interested, but some people are interested and we must work out how we let them know what's happening.
So if I could finish by saying that I think over the next few years we'll see the boundaries between national and international working blur; I don't think it'll be the same as now where international work is still treated as something separate, and as I've said earlier, in the changing world, and in the small world, and in the global world that we are operating in, international work is here to stay, and if we want to change the world for visually impaired people, we'd better get better at it.
So thank you for listening to me, and thank you for the conference; I've enjoyed it greatly.
Thank you Ms. Fazilet Hadi.
I'm going straight away to invite Ms. Joly to speak; the Deputy Director of AGEFIPH, who today is replacing Mr. Segura, the Director General who could not be present at our meeting. Ms. Joly is particularly knowledgeable in the field of sensorial impairments. She has supported us on several occasions and she has notably participated in the different meetings which took place to group together the services which in France have a similar function to that of the SIADV.
I have arrived at the end of the day, I was not able to be here to listen to you throughout the day and I hope that I am not going to overload your intellectual capacities with all the details of the integration procedure for disabled people in France.
This integration procedure of disabled people into companies is at the heart of the problematics of professional integration into the mainstream labour market but also into the sheltered workplace. It is necessary to understand the concept of accompaniment in the integration into a company as being the totality of the technical and human means that are put into practice to succeed in the professional integration of the disabled person and to guarantee the quality of a long-term integration into the company.
The characteristics of the French model can be expressed in three main points.
The first characteristic is that of a departure from the principles of social policy because there is a lot about this model that seems to be paradoxical.
In a traditionally centralised country where the ruling attributes of public power are emphasised, the integration of disabled people departs from these founding principles of social policy in French law. This principle of equality in the eyes of the public service is in fact a little bit pushed aside as the strategy put into practice since the introduction of the 1975 law talks about active positive discrimination from which disabled people benefit through a mobilisation of financial means, of measures and of specialised institutions of which you are a part and which are often entirely dedicated to disabled people.
In terms of professional integration, the positive discrimination can be found in the putting into place of a quota system for employment imposed on companies with 20 or more employees, sanctioned in the case of non-respect through a financial contribution payable by the companies involved.
The disabled people are the only ones who benefit from an obligation on the part of companies to employ them. We could imagine that other categories of the population, such as young unqualified people, unemployed people aged 50 or more, those on income support, for example, just to name a few, could benefit from employment quota systems but the legislator was not in favour of it.
The second characteristic of the system of integration is due to the eminent and recognised position of private initiative. In the organisation of the process, and this is partly explained by the history of disabled policy in France, experiences which are often exemplary have been carried out by companies, partly in the public and industrial sectors. But the essential point comes back to community-based initiative, often through the pressure exerted by families with disabled children and often a voluntary initiative.
Progressively, the large associations of disabled people have not only defended the interests of disabled people and their families, but they have participated in the defining of policies. They have largely managed the running of specialised institutions particularly in the field of preparation for employment, accompaniment in the process of finding employment (Professional Rehabilitation Centres and establishments in the protected sector). The role of managing associations is thus indispensable and, in France, greatly influences the relations between public power and the two other key players which are disabled people's associations and companies. This specific element can also be found in the statute given to the organisation which manages the funds coming from companies which do not fill the quota of 6%, which is AGEFIPH.
Consequently, rather that conferring on AGEFIPH the status of public establishment or administrative agency, the French lawmakers aimed to give it greater independence and a higher level of responsibility through according it the status of national association. Of course, it is under the supervision of the Ministry of Employment, but it is managed jointly by representatives from the business world, employees' unions and the large associations of disabled people.
Before presenting the direct players in the accompaniment, it would perhaps be useful to remind you in three points of the role of AGEFIPH in this process.
It is, outside this central financial body and this redistributor of funds, a financier, because it is progressively becoming the main financier of the Placement and Professional Integration Organisations and of those who are responsible for preparation for employment in the mainstream with an annual budget of nearly 2 billion francs, increased temporarily in 1999-2000 and 2001 through an exceptional donation of 500 million francs per year.
Its mission is as a social engineer which aims to develop the tools and the methods used in the support and the monitoring of disabled people throughout their professional life and lastly a mission of organisation and regulation of the network of players who all work in the field of professional integration of disabled people. This mission is organised and carried out jointly with the State, notably through county-based programmes of integration carried out all over France. These players are, first of all, players outside of the company. They are in fact the liaison workers between the disabled person and his family, his family and the company. They accompany the disabled person through the different steps of the process. This process can involve a certain number of steps:
The phase of preparation for employment. It is essential of course, but there is also a phase of integration into the company which is more or less long and in which the placement and the hiring process under contract are only momentary flashes in the film of integration. The process doesn't end there.
The phase of personalised monitoring, notably within the company, for those people who are heavily disabled and who need, at one moment or another, particular support, support as much for the person as for the professional surroundings into which he is integrated.
Integration officers have very diverse statutes and varied techniques. The main characteristic which enables them to be differentiated between is the distinction between those who work in the mainstream, those who are specialised and versatile, and those who are specialised and dedicated to certain types of disability.
Concerning those who work in the mainstream, we include public organisations that are public employment services, the National Employment Agency, AFPA, professional training centres which can receive disabled people into their environment of able-bodied people.
AGEFIPH intervenes to fund the extra expenditure linked to disability when the integration takes place under these conditions.
Concerning the versatile specialists in disability, it is necessary to indicate the driving role played by EPSR and OIP, which we could call disability generalists and whose mission is to provide support to disabled people at every step in the readaptation process with a view to facilitating their access to a successful professional and social life. Currently there are 115 EPSRs and OIPs in France with some 1000 professionals who contribute to placements. In 1998 there were only 800 professionals who enabled 31 000 disabled people to be employed. The specialised structures are those who provide support to these networks that we have termed generalists and who intervene in conjunction with these structures as resource points aimed at disabled people to whom they provide specific support. These specialised structures, whether they be aimed at the visually impaired, the hearing impaired or people with mental disabilities, also intervene in terms of skills transfer with more generalist liaison officers. They also intervene in the company and that is their principal interest and their essential role in the field of visual impairment.
AGEFIPH funds or co-funds about 15 of these resource organisations, including SIADV, here today, which provides, throughout France, advice and specialised accompaniments in being able to accompany people throughout the process (visual and functional assessment, study of the degree of independence and help in the choice of equipment, support and particular advice).
All of this is essential when the disability does not allow it or demands this specific element at a given moment. These professionals thus create favourable conditions which allow the disabled person to compensate for his disability in the best way possible and to erase the disadvantageous situations in which they find themselves. This intervention must always, as much as possible, remain in reaction to a situation at a given moment, because these precious professionals act as levers at a given moment during the process.
These particular missions of the professionals are of course also implicated during the step of access to employment. In the fact of these liaison officers how does the company organise itself ?
It is interesting to distinguish between players which belong to the company and more circumstance-based players who intervene at those moments when support is required by the company. The responses of the company vary according to its size, its human resources management and, even more importantly, its business culture.
In the big companies, the accompaniment of the disabled person mobilises a certain number of players which belong to the company. We can mention the company doctor, the staff representatives, the welfare officer, the Health and Safety Officer and the staff manager. Thus the companies which currently employ the most disabled people are those, unfortunately, who are not subject to the obligation to employ them. Consequently, only one instance of hiring out of three is a result of the legal positive discrimination process. It is not much in the face of the financial incentives paid by AGEFIPH which intervenes in this way as a mutual fund to the benefit of small and very small companies.
This assessment, still too negative, led the State and AGEFIPH to give their actions a new boost and to make them more effective. The plural annual convention signed in December 1998 mobilises the means accumulated which means a reciprocal commitment by the State and AGEFIPH. The actions of AGEFIPH come into the framework of national plans undertaken by the public employment services, notably the national employment plan.
Concerning visual impairment, I would like to give you a few figures.
We are always very interested in figures at AGEFIPH, myself a little less, but I am nevertheless going to give into the temptation and to tell you that for visual impairment the financial intervention of AGEFIPH has developed differently since 1990.
In 1990, visual impairment represented 30% of funding. It has levelled off at 10% in the last two or three years. If we compare it to other forms of disability, hearing disability represents 12%. It increases each year. Motor disabilities represent 50%, learning disabilities 6%, psychiatric disabilities 4%, invalidity 19%. These are the most recent figures calculated a few days ago.
AGEFIPH funds the measures for the preparation for employment and the professional path of people. Amongst these measures, one is very favoured by visually impaired people : it is the measure of support and monitoring of the integration because technical aids are included here. Within the framework of funding for these technical aids, this measure is favoured at 35% compared to 13% for professional training, 10% for the creation of activities (visually impaired people create their employment). The measure of workstation adaptation is that which accompanies the person in the company (workstation adaptation which represents 30%).
I have only quoted the four essential measures. According to our types of beneficiaries (we have three types of beneficiaries of our measures : the disabled people, associations and companies), during the period from 1998 until the end of September 1999, 45% went to visually impaired people at 42 million francs, 20% went to associations at 20 million francs, 35% went to the economic sector at 33 million francs. We can see that disabled people are at the head of the requests from beneficiaries.
Some characteristics of our visually impaired beneficiaries who put in requests:
However, the seriousness of the disability is more marked because 42% belong to Category C (serious and permanent disability) compared to 25% for the entire disabled population. This rate even reaches 55% for serious disability for visually impaired people less than 30 years of age. This is explained by a significant number of requests for technical aids for high school and tertiary students.
Finally for the period from 1998 to the end of September 1999 we counted 35731 beneficiaries divided into the three categories that I have quoted to you, or nearly 9% of all our beneficiaries.
Thank you
Thank you Ms. Joly.
I will now invite Mr. Stochholm to speak, the Vice President of ICEVI in Europe, who has been kind enough to come and speak to us on behalf of this European organisation which groups together numerous international organisations for visually impaired people.
Vice President Of Icevi Europe
It is a pleasure and honour for me participating in this conference representing ICEVI - The International Council for Education of Visually Impaired People - as Vicechairman of ICEVI's European Committee, and I regret that it was not possible for our Chairman, Dr. Herman Gresnigt, to be present. Thus it is me who is going to give a presentation evaluating and pay tribute to this exciting project.
I'll give a brief orientation about ICEVI, which was founded 47 years ago as an international organisation, established to provide for the development of teaching visually impaired people. It was an organisation characterised by teachers emphasising the importance that teachers for the visually impaired should be able to perform excellent teaching. It was in a world where the teaching of visually impaired took place in special institutions and schools, at least in the developed part of the world. Through this period of time we see a society developing through decentralisation, individuation and normalisation leading to integration or inclusion and moving the responsibility of the visually impaired from the central institutions to general regional and local authorities.
At the same time as the decentralisation and individuation was going on, we have gone through a development in society which has meant that the individual countries cannot exist isolated from each other without economic problems leading to instability which is the root of lack of peaceful coexistence. Thus the international, and not in the least the inter European co-operation, has grown through the years. This also counts for the international and inter European co-operation on visually impaired people, and today we are here to assess yet another of the international initiatives, this time a project on visually impaired adults' possibilities of becoming active parts of the ordinary labour market, not just through support from the specialised centres, but through resources and legislation providing for rehabilitation programmes and special education programmes giving the visually impaired persons professional skills, so that they become qualified to act within the labour market. But as this project points out - those circumstances are not sufficient to make the process succeed. It demands that the general functions of society are not just included, but are made responsible of this group of citizens as well, so that they can take part in society through their work performance.
Often you can ask yourself and others: Why this tremendous rising of international co-operation, for instance ICEVI's conferences, courses, publications etc., in this connection related to the work of ICEVI in Europe, and why all these projects of different kinds, financed by EU ? In this case 5 countries have got together. I see two reasons why.
Firstly it is inspiring seeing how others are working and getting acquainted with their thoughts about the future.
Through these projects you can find out about your own standard as to professional development and innovation. When you are assessing your own efforts, an unconscious assessment of the efforts of the others is taking place, and the conclusions are presented at conferences and in articles. Often agreement on the right way and the right method and definition of the right professional knowledge is expected. And often this, as principal rule, is a very good result of an international process, but we must take care that we, in our efforts to be kind, polite and well accepted in the international connections, are not reluctant to show the courage to break professional traditions and dogmas. We are living in a knowledge and information society, and we must constantly ask ourselves and each other what that means for the blind and partially sighted people. What does it mean for professional experts and what does it mean for the society that we all are part of ?
The other reason for international cooperation is exactly the purpose illustrated in this project. The result of this project - that they have dared going in new directions when thinking about the role of the professional specialists. I do not find that this project concludes that the professional specialists are not going to be even more capable in teaching, rehabilitating, developing the blind and partially sighted human being, but the new thing is that we are not going to make use of the high professional qualifications to take a responsibility that is not ours, but is rightly the responsibility of the society, local authorities and the labour market. That is : the visually impaired citizens in our society today have a legal right being part of the labour market, as professional working power as well as socially.
If the professional centres take in the visually impaired persons in order to give them a special education, special rehabilitation and take over the task from the local authorities and the labour market, there is no doubt that all those parties will be glad having got rid of a difficult problem, but the result will be that the individual visually impaired person will be out of the local authorities' and labour market's minds, and when the specialists have finished their work and say : now it should be possible to get a job, the visually impaired person is no longer seen as an integrated part of the local society and the labour market. In spite of the great effort having been done, it will be almost impossible finding a job for the visually impaired person.
Having a society developing in the way that responsibility is delegated out to workplaces and authorities, and in many other ways attaching importance to individuation stressing the capability of the individual person, assessing his qualifications, it is obvious, that it is important when talking about visually impaired people that we profit from that fact within the development of society, because visually impaired people possess the same intellectual, human, social and educational basis as everybody else. They just do not think and experience in a visual sensing of the world they are living in, but in an auditive and tactile way of sensing. Our working places are no longer traditional industrial working places with production lines. Now and in the future working places are based upon technological networks, and can be placed anywhere as long as you have access to the network. Our task as professional specialists on visual impairment is not taking responsibility of placing visually impaired people on the labour market, but creating basis through giving visually impaired persons the same technological and educational possibilities using the same technology and know-how, but with a different interface giving access to everything in a shape which can be used by the visually impaired person.
I am sure that this project is inspiring for the future work, and I want to thank everybody having taken part, the work having been carried out and the conclusions having been drawn.
We had planned to provide the opportunity of asking some questions following these presentations. If one or two people wish to ask a question, you may do so briefly
Good afternoon, Elisabeth Simard from the Paul and Liliane GUINOT Resource Centre in Villejuif. My question is for Ms. Joly.
I would like to have some information concerning the reduction, if I have understood correctly, of funding by AGEFIPH which has gone from 30% in 1990 to 10% for visually impaired people.
It is not a choice by AGEFIPH to reduce the funding. This reduction is due to the reduction in the number of requests. I suppose therefore that in 1990 we equipped a lot of people and these people have equipment which is lasting.
I think that it is perhaps that. It is essentially a request for specialised equipment. I have not analysed the reasons for this levelling off. Perhaps associations, a certain number of resource points, are responsible for this equipment. People can use it when they need it and make a more refined choice than that which they were able to make at the beginning.
I don't have a particular explanation for it. In any case, it is not an initiative by AGEFIPH.
The meeting will be brought to a close by Francis Guiteau.
Ladies and gentlemen, please take your hats off to him; he will do it in English.
No, no, I will begin in French in order to say that this morning it was said that one of the difficulties encountered during this European project was the language barrier and it is true that we, the French, were the little black sheep in this. We were and still are the only non-English speakers. We have made a little bit of progress in English throughout the last two years, not yet enough to be able to carry out a European project. But I will try nevertheless to conclude by making a small effort thanks to the action and the support of Cathy Chaussepied, who throughout the project has enabled us, even though we speak English badly, to follow more or less everything that was being said.
The honour of drawing this day to a close is mine, and I do it with a lot of pleasure and positive feelings. For us, the SIADV in France, this European project has been a big adventure. It is the first time that we have decided to work in such a close way with colleagues who were not French speaking. It has been an extremely rich learning experience, which has taught us a lot about European practices, of course, but also a lot about our own practices, thanks to this new outlook which we have brought back from every one of our meetings. I would like to thank very sincerely all those, be they Danish, Italian, Irish, English or Scottish, who have welcomed us during this project. I hope very much that we will continue to work together. We are, without a doubt, ready to do so. Thank you for coming, and I wish you a good evening.
