Fenix, a therapeutic garden and orchard for drug addicts

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Fenix, a therapeutic garden and orchard for drug addicts

Grup ABD

Through urban agro-ecology, the Fénix project in the city of Barcelona promotes the social and occupational inclusion of people undergoing treatment for drug addiction. The therapeutic garden and orchard, developed under the slogan “Cultivating new opportunities”, also contributes to destigmatising the group of people with addictions.

The project is located on the grounds of the Care and Monitoring Centre (CAS) in Sarrià (Barcelona), which has become a climatic refuge within the city. It has a total of 10 hectares and works by applying regenerative cultivation techniques, i.e. the approach to plant production is respectful, ecological and sustainable. The facility enables the personalisation of social insertion itineraries that improve the employability of the participants, who take part in the whole process, from the cultivation and maintenance of the plants to the organisation of the tasks and economic planning, in relation to the promotion and sale of the cultivated products. The participants receive basic training in agroecology and gain experience in social entrepreneurship and marketing of the products. The project also enables participants to be self-sufficient in food and promotes responsible consumption and a sustainable food system.

The project has a community aspect, with the garden being at the same time a space for exchange and use by organisations and people from the district who need to meet or carry out outdoor activities. In addition, the resulting food is destined to social services, so that people with addictions who participate in the Garden and Hort Fènix multiply the social impact they receive by helping other people.

Moods, promoting good screen use among teenagers and young people

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Moods, promoting good screen use among teenagers and young people

Nous Cims Foundation and Adsis Foundation

Community intervention project with a comprehensive approach to prevent risks in the use of new technologies among adolescents and young people and promote their proper use.


The Moods Project was born from the realisation that, in a modernity governed by social networks and mobile phones that change the way we live and relate to each other, new technologies pose new challenges and risks –such as addiction, pathological gambling, grooming, cyberbullying or social isolation– to be prevented. Specifically, it is aimed at adolescents and young people, as the name of the project indicates: mood is the English word that refers to the state of mind and is a colloquial expression widely used among young people.

The project is developed through a set of workshops and interventions that are carried out in secondary schools with the aim of promoting the good use of screens among students. It is well known that the use they make of social networks and new technologies is diverse and can have consequences on mental health. Through the workshops, participants reflect on and become aware of their use of screens. Thus, the project provides them with tools that allow them to identify risky and addictive behaviours. In addition, the workshops encourage critical thinking –allowing them to reflect on video games and online gambling, for example– and debate on the values that are transmitted through networks and on the need and importance of combining virtual leisure with live leisure. The project includes an impact evaluation plan that allows measuring and assessing the changes produced among participants through questionnaires.

The project has been implemented in the neighbourhood of Horta Guinardó, in Barcelona, and in Quatre Carreres, in Valencia, where a team of professionals has given workshops to young people aged between 12 and 16 in secondary schools in the neighbourhoods. Apart from workshops in secondary schools, the project also includes prevention workshops in leisure and free time organisations and training for families and teaching teams from the schools.

La Botiga, an integral programme of food guarantee, labour insertion and community participation.

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La Botiga, an integral programme of food guarantee, labour insertion and community participation.

City Council of El Prat de Llobregat, ABD (Asociación Bienestar y Desarrollo)

Supermarket that combines the distribution of food and other basic necessities to people assisted by the social services who cannot guarantee their right to food through the ordinary food distribution market, with the insertion of people with difficulties in accessing the labour market into the productive fabric of the municipality’s own food sector.

La Botiga operates as a supermarket open to the entire population, which also offers an adapted circuit for people referred by the basic social services of the municipality. It is organised on a self-service and/or assisted sales model, where food, hygiene, cleaning and other goods can be purchased. Users of social services can access by appointment, and before entering the space where they can buy food, they pass through a multipurpose room where group and community dynamics are carried out based on conversations between the people involved in the project. Moreover, with a circular logic, the people who make use of the space are involved in the management of the space, based on the principles of cooperativism and the Social and Solidarity Economy.

On the other hand, at La Botiga, the beneficiaries do not collect batches of food, but, through a system of points, choose the products they need themselves. These points, which are equivalent to the money to make the purchase, are assigned to them through the social services prescription sheet, depending on the situation of each person or family. In this way, La Botiga’s model seeks to overcome the welfare model in the field of food distribution.

La Botiga also uses the traditional supply channels of fruit and vegetables and other local products from the Baix Llobregat Agricultural Park and local businesses. This local economic fabric provides a product of solidarity, and at the same time strengthens the circuits that seek to reduce food waste through the reuse of the surplus generated, which also has an impact on improving the environmental health of the municipality.

In addition to the food guarantee service and projects to work on social skills or job skills, other activities and workshops are also carried out, for example to promote healthy eating habits or to encourage intercultural dialogue between users from different backgrounds.

Getxo Zurekin, community accompaniment at the end of life

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Getxo Zurekin, community accompaniment at the end of life

Fundación doble sonrisa

A local community network that supports and accompanies people who are in a situation of advanced illness, offering a model of health, social and community care to improve their well-being and quality of life that goes beyond the resources and capacity of the health and social services systems.

The network acts in different areas: raising public awareness of the importance of care and support for dependent people or those at the end of life; training neighbors in palliative care; and promoting research to foster a paradigm shift in community care.

The network also provides information on the resources available in the municipality in relation to palliative care and the situation of people with advanced illness, in the form of a local observatory that seeks to detect support needs based on a pioneering collaborative methodology where citizen participation is key.

Getxo Zurekin believes in the strength of the community and in networking among people of the same population to take care of each other, to reach where public services cannot reach.

SEAP, a programme to prevent and manage the mistreatment of elderly people in fragile situations

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SEAP, a programme to prevent and manage the mistreatment of elderly people in fragile situations

Consell Comarcal del Baix Llobregat

Image from SEAP.

This service promotes the good treatment of elderly people in a situation of fragility and advises professionals who act in situations of abuse.

The SEAP (Specialised Service for the Care of People) bases its task on three lines of work. The first is prevention, through advice and training for professionals working with elderly people and people in situations of fragility. The second is social awareness-raising, thanks to talks, workshops, events and campaigns to promote collective awareness of the need to defend the good treatment of people. This area also includes specific actions aimed at professionals, citizens, adults, children and adolescents, the elderly and people with functional diversity. Finally, intervention, which is based on the coordination of actions with social services and other municipal services in situations of mistreatment of elderly people or people in situations of fragility.

The objectives of the SEAP are based on improving the quality of life of elderly people and people in situations of fragility, guaranteeing the prevention, detection and care of poor treatment and mistreatment through interdisciplinary work and networking with other services in the territory. It also responds to the real needs of the professionals who care for elderly people and people in situations of fragility when situations of poor treatment and/or mistreatment are detected.

It also aims to adapt the transmission of essential social, legal and medical information to the rest of the professionals in order to design a joint plan, to respond to the real situations of poor treatment and/or mistreatment of people in these groups and to guide and advise each situation individually, coordinating public and private resources to facilitate the necessary care.

SEAP

REHAB-LAB, virtual community for the manufacture of technical aids with 3D printing

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REHAB-LAB, virtual community for the manufacture of technical aids with 3D printing

REHAB-LAB

Image from REHAB-LAB.

A virtual community for the manufacture of technical aids using 3D printing, which allows users to design and build their own aids in collaboration with technologists and socio-health professionals.

In this service, which is unique in France because of its integration within a rehabilitation centre, engineers are dedicated to innovation and the development of technological assistance for people with disabilities. The REHAB-LAB enables users to actively participate in the manufacture of their technical aids, thanks to 3D printing technology.

3D printing offers many advantages over conventional manufacturing techniques used to date in occupational therapy: adaptation, reproduction, aesthetics, weight, distribution, time, cost, accessibility, appropriation, mediation/occupation…

Accessibility is the main interest of 3D printing for users, who can be more involved in the rehabilitation process. Since the design of an object is digital, the possibility of creating one’s own technical aids is no longer due to the physical manipulation of materials but to the accessibility of the computer tool.

Rehab-Lab

Woebot, self-help chat for dealing with mental and emotional discomfort

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Woebot, self-help chat for dealing with mental and emotional discomfort

Woebot Health

Image from Woebot

A chatbot that helps to manage moods, learn about oneself and cope with mental and emotional distress.

In a cognitive behavioural therapy framework, Woebot asks the user how they are feeling and what is going on in their life in a short conversation format. Woebot also talks about mental health and emotional well-being, and shares videos and other useful tools to address the user’s mood and other needs related to their mental and emotional well-being. Woebot is like a self-help book that adapts to each person’s different needs and concerns.

Woebot uses a combination of natural language processing, psychological expertise, excellent writing and a sense of humour to create an informative and friendly conversational experience.

In a study conducted by Stanford University, Woebot use was shown to generate significant reductions in anxiety and depression, primarily in people aged 18-28 who had spoken to Woebot on a near-daily basis.

Woeboth Health

Reconnect, a professional app to ensure the continuity of social insertion pathways

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Reconnect, a professional app to ensure the continuity of social insertion pathways

Groupe SOS

Image from Reconnect webpage.

Work app for social professionals, which gives them all the information they need to support users: check their history, update their status, record meeting reports, schedule reminders for upcoming events, find documents and contacts useful, etc. It also allows you to inform team members of the situation of a person being cared for. And, in the event of a job replacement, the new professional can quickly get an overview of the ongoing procedures and the next steps to take in relation to each of the users.

In addition, it allows you to follow in real time the number of places available in services, accommodation and activities, and find the people who need them; and automatically analyze data statistics related to the people being cared for and assessing the impact of social intervention.

The ergonomics of the application have been specially worked with social professionals and third sector entities so that the management is very simple and allows the professionals to concentrate on accompanying the people being cared for. Co-design with third sector entities also allows you to provide solutions tailored to the specifics of the sector’s programs and services. And, in addition, the configuration of the system allows to satisfy the specific operational needs of each social entity.

Reconnect

La Inclusivadora, centre for the promotion of self-employment and entrepreneurship for people with intellectual disabilities

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La Inclusivadora, centre for the promotion of self-employment and entrepreneurship for people with intellectual disabilities

FCSD

Image from Pexels.

Centre for the promotion of self-employment and entrepreneurship for people with intellectual disabilities, which offers different inclusive workspaces, such as a Coworking (shared workspace for people who want to develop their personal and professional projects) and a Fablab (digital creation space with the latest technology, such as 3D printers, which is ideal for promoting the manufacture of small-scale prototypes), designed for training and digital experimentation, both for people with and without disabilities.

The Catalan Down’s Syndrome Foundation (FCSD) launched this project with the intention of creating a work and training space to promote self-employment for people with Down’s syndrome or other intellectual disabilities who want to start entrepreneurial projects. These spaces are also open to all those people who want to carry out entrepreneurial projects that share the values of the FCSD.

From these spaces, the Inclusivadora aims to provide courses and workshops to learn basic knowledge about the use of Fablab technology, as well as social activities open to everyone, but also to teach basic knowledge about how to carry out a business and/or personal project, thanks to individualized advice and mentoring in entrepreneurship.

La Inclusivadora was created with the aim of encouraging interaction between people with and without disabilities and creating a more diverse and enriching work environment. The key to these spaces is the exchange of knowledge between the different agents.

FCSD Fundació Catalana Síndrome de Down

TeknoAdineko, technology and community action against the social isolation of elderly people living alone

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TeknoAdineko, technology and community action against the social isolation of elderly people living alone

Agintzari

Image from Freepik.

Intelligent technological platform that allows for the detection and knowledge of situations of solitude and social isolation among the ageing sections of the population, and for effective responses from the community and social services.

TeknoAdineko has developed a Big Data Risk Assessment system, which allows the organization, storage, manipulation, analysis and modelling of large amounts of data from the real world and linked to a spatial reference. It identifies people older than 65 who live alone and catalogues them at different levels of vulnerability or risk based on physical and health indicators, relational, economic, housing, basic resource distance and aid, etc. It feeds on information from the sponsor, the cadastral and municipal social services; as well as information identified by agents of the person’s community network (Beharis), previously trained in social gaze.

The TeknoAdineko smart tool is targeted at three different profiles of people: fragile elderly people who are in a solitude situation that negatively impacts on maintaining their autonomy; community volunteers who, through simple training, participate in identifying situations of vulnerability; and municipal professionals who incorporate new technology tools and exploit the community’s potential for social intervention.

TeknoAdineko is based on knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of the community networks and key agents of each municipality or territory, and is being implemented experimentally in both urban and rural municipalities of Euskadi. It includes a technological tool that allows the situations of social isolation to be detected; a community activation program and key actors from each territory; and an app that allows connecting to municipal social services.

Agintzari