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The main objective of the PROFARM project is to experiment a model that can contribute to the well-being, professional/personal growth and the social integration of VET students with disabilities in the field of agricultural production. The final aim is to reshape horizontal integration through individuals with disabilities, their families, schools, social-health services and private partnerships, to facilitate the employment and social inclusion of young disabled persons through Social Farming (SF). More in detail, the project will focus on identifying cross-policy synergies and multi-professional partnerships to ensure integrated services in favour of the user/student as a person.

Final Conference Gubbio

Last week the Final Conference in Gubbio, Umbria, Italy took place. It was a very interestig agenda. More then 70 people attended the conference.

We will disseminate more information soon about this very interesting PROFARM Final Conference and related Stuyvisits in Spoletto and Todi on this website. You can also vist the PROFARM website ofcourse: Click here

The Dutch PROFARM Scale Up Event takes place on Thursday, October 18. This mini conference is part of the European project ProFarm (social farming) about education on care farms. Zone College (formerly known as Groene Welle) and Dutch Foundtion of Innovation Welfare 2 work are the Dutch partners in this European project.

The PROFARM project  is committed to education on care farms as an alternative learning pathway  for students who are lost in regular formal education. The mini conference is dedicated to this subject and focuses on the experiences gained during the project, raises the question of which children and young people could be the target groups; and how you design an alternative learning pathway in collaboration with municipalities and education. Soon more news soon about this Dutch Scale Up event

The 4th partnership meeting of the PROFARM project recently took place from the 23rd to the 25th of April in Zwolle, the Netherlands. The first day was dedicated to the internal partnership meeting of the project and was arranged at Groene Welle premises. Whereas, the following two days the 2nd international peer-review event took place and was attended by 30 experts from different European countries. The peer-review event was held at several premises, as many technical visits to social farms were arranged. The latter was very interesting, as the PROFARM project is currently in it’s experimental stage. To read more in detail about the meeting in Zwolle, see 4th partnership meeting Zwolle_minutes. See also the official website: www.profarmproject.eu

The situation in the Netherlands
The situation of the experimentation in the Netherlands is been created around two main networks, a local one and a national one.
With respect to the local network “Het Vechtdal”, the first meeting was held in January 2017. The visit to this farm, in cooperation with the expertise of the Landbouw en Zorg Overijssel farm, helped the partners to collect useful information for the development of a project plan for the piloting phase.
The situation at national level is very interesting. Partners discovered that social farms in the Netherlands offer several types and combinations of services, both in terms of educational path and care activities. These differences of services and approaches were perceived as a resource to diversify the typologies of activities to be offered to beneficiaries. The first national meeting was held in November 2017 and 20 social farmers participated, sharing their best practices, experiences, and discussing about potential developments.

Anton Kiewiet underlined the key role of the PROFARM project in promoting innovation and innovative approaches in the Netherlands. In fact, the project has paved the path for the development of education farms focusing on sustainability, meaning a prosecution of the activities after the end of the project in December 2018.
Partners will keep on collaborating with the established networks, especially the national one, to develop new formal and informal educational paths to be implemented in the farms. These latter should be called “education farms” and not “social farms”, since the expression “social farms” is already used with another meaning.
The experimentations

Not all the beneficiaries of the PROFARM experimentation have mental/physical disabilities, as some of them are so-called “socially disabled”, meaning people experiencing problems at home and/or at school (dropout, difficult relationships with classmates). At present, 5 out of 10 experimentations have started, 3 are about to start and 2 more will be launched in the upcoming weeks. The “model” applying to these experimentations sees a tight collaboration between the schools and the farms. In fact, the case managers are all teachers from the schools and their role in crucial also in the elaboration of the vocational plans. These latter are developed by the case manager in close cooperation with other two key actors: the student and the school.

The role of the school is also very important when it comes to the decision on how to spend the funds coming from the Municipalities. The Municipality provides the school with around €8,000 euro per student and, in the framework of the PROFARM project, around half of this funding has been devoted to the farms.

The situation in Germany
Gerhard Herz presented the situation of the experimentations in Germany. He first highlighted the specificities of the German framework, which is divided into two specific systems: the educational one and the social one (a fixed system where all disabled are inscribed). The educational system comprises around 400 different vocational courses, whereas the social system is strictly connected to the national labour agency. For some of the beneficiaries the national labour agency provides funds.

The case managers are located in several parts of the country and they all deal with beneficiaries with mental disabilities. These latter are involved in the so-called “skilled work”, but they are not getting a diploma. With respect to the building of the network, two meetings were held but only some case managers participated.

The beneficiaries of the intervention are trained as skilled workers, and they are assessed with a particular instrument – similar to the matrix and the bilan de competences used in the PROFARM project – when they step in the path, and then after 3 years and at the end of the training programme. In Germany, beneficiaries do not have a specific vocational plan, but they are all inscribed in programmes. The assessment is functional to the involvement of each beneficiary in the most appropriate programme of training.

A new law is being enforced in Germany, which opens up the social farming sector also to private companies. Moreover, a new law on social inclusion is now under implementation and will change some perspectives of the present system: the focus will be on the beneficiary and on his/her will, with the surrounding environment supporting the personal/professional development of the disabled and the achievement of his/her goals.

In this evolving system, the added value of the PROFARM project is that partners can compare different systems and learn from each other. Moreover, also the different roles of the case managers are a good element for reflection.

The situation in Italy
Altheo Valentini presented the situation of the experimentations in Italy. The key role in Italy is played by the schools, since all beneficiaries are high-school students.
The experimentations entail both positive and more critical aspects:
* positive: long-term knowledge of the students; deep knowledge of families and social contexts; students already involved in an inclusive setting; the partnership between schools and farms is consolidated
* criticalities: some problems experienced with transports to bring the beneficiaries to the farms; sometimes hard to combine school and agriculture calendars; families must be active players and present; sometimes there is a lack of human and financial resources.

General aspects of the networks are:
* farms: they demonstrated high interest in the project; 5 farms are involved but only 2 are already multifunctional
* PROFARM network: the co-planning process was facilitated by the training for case managers; only 4 out of the 6 local networks activated then decided to participate in the experimentation phase
* beneficiaries: most of the beneficiaries are affected by mental disability; 15 experimentations were confirmed/started

The regional experimentations are divided as follows:
– Foligno: 5 users
– Todi: 6 users
– Spoleto: 1 user
– Gubbio: 3 users
Experimentations all started between April and May and there is a high percentage of male beneficiaries.

Finally, we are in progress of video taping the experimentations through the #PROFARMVIDEOCONTEST  !!!

De Groenewelle and the Dutch Foundation of Innovation Welfare 2 Work have set up a ProFarm network in the Netherlands. De Groenwelle made a lot of initial contacts with social farmers in ‘Het Vechtdal’. Around 10 social farmers were invited for our first meeting in January 2017. Care professionals, people from school and the local government were invited as well. While building up the network, we have made use of the profession and knowledge of the cooperation Landbouw en Zorg Overijssel.

In June 2017 we had our first PROFARM meeting with 5 socials farmers in Barneveld and later on in September we had a even bigger meeting with 8 social farmers, again in Barneveld. We decided to organize a meeting for social farmers from all over the country in November 2017. 20 social farmers spoke about  their good practices and the challenges and obstacles they face… What does a social farm look like in the most desirable way? What are the characteristics of the different groups and ages of students? What is required for good, qualitative education on a farm?

For ProFarm we will develop educational farms in a sustainable way, which will continue after the end of the ProFarm project. We can make ProFarm innovative to develop educational farms, because we have already made a great shift on farms by going into the direction of social farms, including different kinds of education. Now the next step is to continue progress to include ways of formal learning that makes it possible for students to finish a certain level of education by receiving certificates or (and that’s what we prefer) a diploma.

There is a lot to explore about the different kinds of education social farmers will combine with their work on the farm…

Read more at the PROFARM website and more importantly, join us at our PROFARM Conference in Zwolle 22-25 April 2018: See you there !

The third PROFARM German network meeting took place on September 6, 2017 at the “Werkhof” in Kassel.  The Case Manager – this is the language used by the Italian-Dutch-German EU project PROFARM process facilitator, plays an important role supporting people with care needs starting up their careers. It involves quality assurance and accompaniment, and the case manager doing this task can come from very different professions: e.g. farmers, social workers or educators. While the project partners from the Umbria region in Italy are just beginning to invent the image of such a process facilitator, they exist in the Netherlands and Germany.

There are many approaches involving Case Management, without having a single professional definition. Against the background of the Federal Incorporation Act, however, the issue of the EU project is also unexpectedly up-to-date for Germany. There is a real chance to work out the success factors for successful accompaniment of young people needing care in social work fields by Case Manager quasi-obstetrics.

As part of the PROFARM project, a workshop had been held at the end of June for the case managers involved in the project in Italy. This workshop followed a previously completed video introductory course and included several lectures and panel discussions. A report on the meeting formed the start of the meeting in Kassel.

The German system can be summarized as follows: Anyone who wishes to be admitted to a workshop for people with disabilities must go through the “integration procedure” and the “vocational training area” 1 (“EV-BBB”). This structure is obligatory in Germany.

For more information, please read the German Rundbrief page 29-32: RUNDBRIEF_DASoL30

The implementation of the PROFARM model will mainly take place on the involved farms, presenting the workplace for the vocational training of young people with special needs. Therefore the partner farms play an important part concerning the quality and the sustainability of the PROFARM-project. That is why we have drafted an assessment form. The goal of this assessment form (available in Dutch, Italian, German and English) is to find fitting farms which meet the criteria of the PROFARM-project in order to welcome the farm as an active partner for the vocational training.

First of all, what is meant by the PROFARM-project?    

Several partners from Italy, the Netherlands and Germany are working on an EU-funded project called PROFARM (PROfessional and personal empowerment in social FARMing) whose aim is the advancement of the inclusion through a vocational training of people with disabilities on Social Farms. The training system will be set up in such a way that it can provide the qualification, support and empowerment of people with disabilities individually.

The farms involved in the project play a key part in the success of the implementation. They not only function as a training and working place for the formation and development of the young people with disabilities. Social farming gives a frame for active inclusion in the society, creating a new dialogue among different fields and competencies. They are directly connected to the local community network and through this play a fundamental role in the living and enhancement of inclusion.

Concerning the PROFARM-project the farms will be one of different important actors who will continue with the work started within the frame of the project. The sustainability and quality of the implementation of the project is of big importance in order to ensure the ongoing process. Therefore, specific guidelines have been set up within which the role and the responsibilities of all different actors are described. The guidelines are currently translated in Dutch, German and Italian.

The goal of this assessment is to find fitting farms who would like to be active partners of the PROFARM-project, meeting the named criteria and will be able to host a vocational training of the students with special needs.

PROFARM Newsletters

In the PROFARM project we (Dutch Foundation of Innovation Welfare 2 Work and De Groenewelle) work together with Dutch, Italian and German partners. Anthropoi Bundesverband is one of our German partners. Their „Bericht 2017. Soziale Zukunft“ informs about their activities in 2016/2017.  This was published for a big event in June 2017: The congress Soziale Zukunft took place in Bochum, Germany (15.-18.06.2017). About 900 people came together to discuss a more human and social as well as ecological future for our societies. See below an interesting article (in German) from Dr. Gerhard Herz, about our PROFARM project on page 46: Anthropoi_Berichtsheft_2017_Soziale_Zukunft_web (1):

The aim of the ERASMUS + project “PROFARM – Professional and personal empowerment in social farming” is to make it easier for people with assistance needs to enter into a professional activity in the field of agriculture and horticulture… Soon we will frequently post newsletters in English, German, Italian and Dutch about this excellent social farm project: PROFARM.

The PROFARM peer review event on Monday and Tuesday 13-14 March 2017, just finished and was very succesful. Topics of discussion were:

• The Case Manager Profile – ‘An easy role to define , but difficult to play’
• The Tool for the assessment of the Social Farms
• Guidelines for the establishment of Social Farming networks
• Memorandum of Understanding

The Case Manager : ‘An easy role to define , but difficult to play’

Altheo Valentini: ‘In Italy it’s a good moment for providing courses and information about case management. We don’t have a profiles of case management, it’s not an institutional function. We have activated 4-6 networks, and all representatives were teachers. So we don’t really know the concept of a case manager and case management.  We get feedback from teacher who say that there is not enough of a pedagogical structure and approach towards the young person…’

Idske of  Social Farm De Huppe: I started as a teacher, and started on school with children aged 10-12 years. After that I started as social worker and teacher on a farm. I teach children who are not able to be at school, because classes are to big, they become frustrated. Because social workers say you have to do education and do something. And than they can come to the farm. I teach the basics around wood crafting, animal care, working on the farm land. The ultimate goal is to go back to school. Our target group is 11-18 years. It’s not a formal pathway to school. But it’s sort of formalized to arrange the return to school. They stay temporarily (but temporarily means around 3 to 4 years). The group of children I work with is around the size of 6 children. It’s all 1-to-1 coaching. I am a teacher and case manager. I am standing in the middle. I organize everything around my children.

Antonella: We have a similar situation in Italy. Children don’t want to go to school, because they are frustrated. So they stay 2 or 3 days in school and the other days they are in the community/farm. In this way they become more motivated and become more at ease and they function better. We also have project around sailing, and now we want to open a new community, in a social farm concept. But there is not a lot experience. Age of children we teach is 14-20 years. They stay in one class for 2-3 years. At  14 they don’t want to go to school usually anymore…  The Primary school is till 10 years, than 2 years secondary school, at 14 they do 2 years of upper secondary school (middle school)…

Anton Kiewiet of De Groenewelle: Case management works different in formal education. If You are a student, there is a mentor who is responsible for the students. The mentor intervenes and monitors the students. In this way he takes care of students in school sounds very easy

Monique Oehlers: I was case manager of the Youth Department at the municipality Purmerend. We worked a lot with young people with disability (adhd, borderline, etc.). I was sort of the spider in the web, and stayed in touch with social service providers, family, doctors, etc.. That was case management for me. And now I have a different age group: from 18 till 65. Now it’s mostly people who are socially not adapted, and have addictions, multi-problems and trying to find their way back to society. I work with 7 people who are on welfare and they are my ambassadors and they guide other people on welfare who are even more further away from society. We work from a community center and try to build a bridge between them and the society. It’s a sort of case management plus. In the Netherlands if you don’t have the knowledge you use other expertise

Paul Kitchen: In Scotland, my role has been a provider of education (forma land informal learning). The case manager recruits and decides on the processes and pathways of development. They work with ages of 15-65 with whole spectrum of disabilities (adhd, asperges, etc.) My role was to elaborate with the case manager of what we could deliver. It was as an institution to deliver something which means something for those young people. We would let them take experience on the formal agricultural school, an agricultural informal farm. We can do whatever the case manager requests. We can provide various informal and formal forms of education, I guess it’s pretty tailor made.

Pieter van Schie (@Pietervschie): Scotland is very interesting because they have 2 extra QF levels ( 1 and 2), below the European Qualification Framework (EQF), to acknowledge the young people with disabilities, and fewer opportunities with certifications under the level 1 of the EQF… The young person has to attend a minimum time to engage on the course to get certified (e.g. a certificate of work readiness, employability award). You are preparing them to move them up and acknowledge their skills

Paul Kitchen: In Scotland every area has an agricultural school, and these schools have their own farms (sometimes connected to a separate activity, e.g. a golf course). The money comes through the referring organization. The case managers are sometimes from the local authority or sometimes from charities who are set up to help young people with disability. There is a very close contact between us and the case manager.  S/he, the case manager, is working with all the service providers.

Gerhard : When we entered the project we thought about a classical approach… There is one function which is not called case manager, but is close to a welfare organization (The job center). They finance a 3-year path (from 18 till 21) and they provide a year of orientation. They have normally some workshops (e.g. a bakery, farm, etc. ). After the first year they decide what to do to and where to go, and they have an obligation to make a competence analysis. What is already there and what to develop fort he next few years. After 3 years there is a next decision, to go into the first labour market… this can be done by work placement or internship or apprenticeship. If that is not possible, they stay in sheltered workshops.  The social worker starts as of from the school (from 18 years on). All the clients are classical disabled persons and multiple problems

To clarify: My impression is that in Netherlands and Germany there is already some structure in the system regarding case management. In Italy it is a growing situation around case management. In the UK/Scotland it looks very similar

Soon more news about the feedback the PROFARM peer reviewers. See also our tweet feed and our website. The Dutch partners are agricultural school De Groenwelle and St. Dutch Foundation of Innovation Welfare 2 Work.

The Profarm project enters a very important phase. Nearby Stuttgart, Germany the third transnational meeting of  the PROfesional and personal empowerment in social FARMing is taking place in the period 13-16th March 2017. The main objective of the PROFARM project is to experiment a model that can contribute to the well-being, professional/personal growth and the social integration of VET students with disabilities in the field of agricultural production.

This collabouration of Italian, German and Dutch organisations is co-funded by the European Union.

Agenda 3rd PROFARM Meeting Tennental, Germany

Final_agenda_third_partnership_meeting PROFARM in Germany

At the social farm zorgboerderij Hoeve Op Vollenhof in Wezep (Oldebroek) the first Dutch Local PROFARM Network meeting took place. At this meeting there were a lot of Profarm stakeholders, including representatives of social farms, local institutions, the world of education, companies in the agricultural sector with a strong social vocation (companies and social / educational farms), associations, social collaboration.

On behalf of the project team PROfessional and personal empowerment in social farming (Profarm) of the Groene Welle, Anton Kiewiet welcomed the PROFARM delegates for the first network meeting, on January 19, 2017. De Groene Welle and Dutch Foundation of Innovation Welfare 2 Work – the two Dutch PROFARM partner organisations – explained the European project Profarm. Besides the Dutch there are also representatives from Italy and Germany, each with two institutes involved in the project. The project is led by the province of Umbria in Italy.

The Project outline: In addition to developing European policy reform for social farming, the project focuses mainly on teaching students which currently are hard to offer adequate training. We need to educate them to get these students what they need to develop into a fully fledged job in the green sector. During this project we will develop an appropriate learning path, for students in a Work Based Learning setting offered in an educational program within a care farm / care business. With this appropriate learning route we want to prepare them for a position on the labour market. Obtaining a certification, preferably a degree appropriate to the capabilities of the student in question, is a very important objective…

During the local network meeting the following topics were covered:

• Introduction to get image in the network
• Explanation European project Profarm:

Groene Welle is responsible for implementation of the pilot

• Zoom in on the target
• What students we are talking about?
• Memorandum of Understanding
• Do you want to commit to the project Profarm?
• Talk about options for implementation of the pilot project on care farms
• What is already there, what is possible and what are the challenges?

The Questionaire & Work Based Learning

A participants of this meeting received a request to fill in the questionnaire. The purpose of this questionnaire is to identify the best practice. This purpose was not clear to everyone in advance. The participants discussed about a solution to still get the right information.

Anton explained the meaning of work based learning in the current Dutch education. A few remarks from the local network audience were: The positive aspect of the social farms is the context in which young people can live and learn. A social farm provides a peaceful environment. Moreover they can provide the proper care. However, the situation on a social farm is not always an authentic situation in which the specific vocational skills can be learned. Therefore, a collaboration is needed with entrepreneurs in the area of the social farms. Some social farms already have this collabouration.