On Friday June 9th 2023 the Dutch Empower.Ment multiplier event was held. The EMPOWER.Ment – Erasmus+ project was aimed to include, integrate and empower people with mental health challenges. The Dutch multiplier event (ME) was hosted by chairwoman Carla de Vreij and director Pieter van Schie. They presented all the materials developed during the Empowerment project. 

Empowering Results

The empowering results achieved were focused on the future improvement of the life of people with mental health challenges and their supporters. These were three intellectual outputs:

O1 – Methodological guide on EMPOWER.Ment: from inspiration to impact – a guide to incorporate the results into everyday life, clinical practice, support and services

O2 – Toolkit “We say, You say, They say” – a glossary for a new inclusive approach in mental health support

O3 – EMPOWER.Ment e-learning module via MOOC, in order to train volunteers, youngsters, family, professionals into inclusive support for people with smhd impact.

Similar ME’s and walkathons have also been replicated in other #Empowerment partnership countries like Greece, Cyprus, Italy and Iceland.

More news will be published on this website page soon!

The multiplier event of the EMPOWER.ment project, part of the partnership’s Walkathon. will take place in Leiden the 9^th of June. The EMPOWER.ment project aim has been to include, integrate and empower people with mental health challenges. In our Dutch multiplier event (ME), DFW2W will show all the materials developed along the project. This ME will be replicated in other ME’s and walkathons in all the countries participating in the project: Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Iceland and The Netherlands.

What to Expect on the Dutch ME?

During the Dutch multiplier event the results of the empower.Ment partnership will be disseminated. What has been the impact of the intelectual outputs we have developed in terms of how people with lived experiences, volunteers and professionals? What kind of feel comes up to mind? If we implement what we have developed and teach, what results do we get? Is the stigma, self-stigma reduced? Do people feel more included, respected? Do they take more responsibillity if they are taking power? Do professionals feel less burdened of more limited by the new approach, new usage of words? It’s going to be really exciting to see how the results will be received.

Empowering Results

The different results developed in the project have been focused on the future improvement of the life of people with mental health challenges and their supporters. These three results will be shown on the Multiplier event in the Netherlands:

• O1 – Methodological guide on EMPOWER.Ment: from inspiration to impact – a guide to incorporate the results into everyday life, clinical practice, support and services
• O2 – Toolkit “We say, You say, They say” – a glossary for a new inclusive approach in mental health support
• O3 – EMPOWER.Ment e-learning module via MOOC, in order to train volunteers, youngsters, family, professionals into inclusive support for people with smhd impact.

… Because how we talk about mental health matters!

Check out further information on the website of the Empower.ment project:

On March 10th 2023 11 delegates of the Dutch Focus Group Empower.Ment discussed together in Leiden, Holland about mental health. Below, part 2 of ‘How we Talk about Mental Health matters:

On Friday November 25th 2022, the Dutch Foundation of Innovation Welfare to Work organized an Empower.Ment Focus Group day in Leiden. The focus group has among others discussed the guide and the glossary of the project. Today we publish part 2, a summary of the highlights what’s been discussed on the Dutch focus group day regarding the Empower.Ment glossary

Below a summary in a video about the Dutch Empower.Ment focus group day (including Part I).

Dutch Focus Group – How we talk about Health matters ! Part 2: The ‘’I say, you say, we say’’ Glossary

How we Talk About Mental Health Matters Part 1 & 2: A Video

On Friday November 25th 2022, the Dutch Foundation of Innovation Welfare to Work organized an Empower.Ment Focus Group day in Leiden. The focus group has among others discussed the guide and the glossary of the project. Today Part1 a summary of the highlights what’s been discussed on the Dutch focus group day regarding the methodological guide

Dutch Focus Group – How we talk about Health matters ! Part 1: The Methodological Guide

How we talk about mental health mattters! On Friday November 25th 2022, the Dutch Foundation of Innovation Welfare to Work organizes an Empower.Ment Focus Group day in Leiden. The focus group will among others discuss the guide and the glossary of the project.

The second Training activity of the EMPOWER.ment project took place from the 20th to the 23^rd September 2022 in Mati, Greece. The EMPOWER.ment project tries to include, integrate and empower people with mental health issues. The week has been full of meetings and development of the core activities of the project.

ANIMA

The week started on Tuesday with a catch up meeting where our hostpartner Anima presented the agenda and activities for the whole week. Then, we had two online talks with Mary Boile and John Read about mental health and different approaches used. The partnership also visited the ANIMA premises in Athens, where all the partners had a nice talk with service users and workers and their way of working.

Maritina from ANIMA presented several WHO Good practices. The partnership also discussed and worked on the next steps to finalize IO2, the Glossary, with all the definitions of the words and the new approach. Furthermore, partners checked IO1 to see what were the missing points

On Thursday, Luca from Unimore University (Italy) showed us the first steps for the Empower.ment platform, different options and the partners discussed how would be the best way to proceed with the content development. In the afternoon, the partnership enjoyed a cultural visit in Athens.

To finalize the week, all partners visited “Myrtillo”, a social cooperative enterprise where also some points of IO1, the methodological guide of Empower.ment were discussed with local experts.

The EMPOWER.ment project tries to include, integrate and empower people with mental health issues. The week has been full of meetings, work and cultural activities, all very important for the implementation of the project. The EMPOWER.ment training activities took place from the 6^th June to the 10^th June 2022 in Reggio Emilia, Italy. The Training week ended with an open conference at UNIMORE.

Empower.Ment Programme

The week started with a conference where the EMPOWER.Ment project was presented to the students of the Degree Course in Psychiatric Rehabilitation Technique (UNIMORE) and to Health Professionals in the San Lazzaro Campus. After the study visit the partnership had their first session meeting on IO2 ‘The Glossary’, where the terms are defined, included and the structure is set out. In the afternoon all the partners visited the historical part of Reggio Emilia.

The following days the Intellectual outputs 1 and 2 were also discussed in the shared meeting sessions. The partners also enjoyed a visit to the l’Ovile cooperative, a Guided tour of the Museum of the History of Psychiatry and the Archive of historical medical records and also a visit to the “Sentiero Facile” Association where people with mental health lived experiences explained their journey as facilitators.

Open Conference UNIMORE Reggio Emilia

The week ended with and Open conference at the university in Reggio Emilia: “Stories, philosophies, laws: different experiences of Mental Health” where partners and professionals had the opportunity to share their views, experiences and knowledge about mental health on the different countries.

Work is Treatment, Treatment is Work

During the Conference each country presented the state of the art of the mental health system in their own country. This was very interesting and gave a lot of clarity in the differences and similarities of the partnership countries. Pieter van Schie, director of DFW2W presented the Dutch framework and structure around people with Severe Mental Health Difficulties and their journey to work: The Dutch system always starts with a ‘one-size-fits-all approach’ and believes in work is treatment and treatment is work. Everyone can do something is the perspective of each person who wants to work. The stats of The Netherlands show more then 3 decades of low unemployment rates. This is the result of culture change, which started with the implementation of the WWB in 2004 and the ‘Work First’ approach.’

The Dutch EMPOWER.Ment transnational project meeting on Monday and Tuesday November 29-30th 2021 in Area071, at Leiderdorp was a very successful event. It was the first time the partnership organisations met each other face-to-face. The partnership could do a lot of work. Just a few days before the meeting took place the Dutch partial lockdown was implemented. Fortunately did had no impact on the success and progress made. The project introduces and ensures empowerment and inclusive support for people with severe mental health disease (SMHD), through preparation (training), mindset (toolkit) and supervision (guide) for volunteers, family/friends, professionals and students. The Empower.Ment project is co-funded by Erasmus Plus Programme of the European Union.

We are about empowerment

One of the very interesting discussions during the Dutch meeting was ‘how to get involvement and engagement with people with lived experiences’. The partnership pointed out the issue of practiallity and the fact that ‘We are about empowerment’: So that means that we need, from day 1, get people who need to be empowered, engaged and involved… So how are we going to engage with them? How are we going to make it happen? The process is for the people with lived experiences. The partnership agreed that they must be the co-producers of the intelectual outputs. To start in work groups in each organisation to built the definitions and terms through discussions. It’s about engagement and involvement of people with lived experiences to reflect on themselves and empower their capacities to stay in and work in mental services. And then summarise and present the context and put it in the Empowerment (FB) work group for a definitive frame work and definitions. We don’t only want to collect data, we want to engage and have them involved with the discussions. This could be done by one-to-one interviews or in group sessions.

Empower.Ment Meetings Coming Up

• Learning Mobility Italy /LTT(Training days): 7, 8, 9 and 10th June 2022
• Learning Mobility Greece (Training days): 19 20, 21 -22th September 2022)

The learning mobilities are important training days for the partnership. Experts will come from outside the partnership to train and present. The LTT activities is about learning, producing and fine tuning the intelectual outputs and much more.

Action Plans

During the Dutch meeting the partners made the action plans for the glossary and manual more smart, to be sure we can answer and give indepth insight around questions like: What is the impact in terms of how people with lived experiences, volunteers and professionals feel? If we implement what we teach, what is the result? This must be the substantial result of our appproach. Is the stigma, self-stigma reduced? Do people feel more included, respected? Do they take more responsibillity if they are taking power? Do professionals feel less burdened of more limited by the new approach, new usage of words?

when you want to keep up to date, visit our project website, click here

The EMPOWER.Ment project has its transnational project meeting in The Netherlands. On Monday and Tuesday November 29-30th 2021 the partnership wil meet in Area071, at Leiderdorp. The project introduces and ensures empowerment and inclusive support for people with severe mental health disease (SMHD), through preparation (training), mindset (toolkit) and supervision (guide) for volunteers, family/friends, professionals and students. The Empower.Ment project is co-funded by Erasmus Plus Programme of the European Union.

Agenda Dutch Host Meeting

www.empower-ment.eu