The University of Barcelona (UB) is leading the European cross-border project coParticiPA, to promote the participation of people in vulnerable situations in the network of social services, both basic and specialised, in the neighbouring territories on both sides of the Pyrenees, in Spain, Andorra and France. The project, which will last three years, is led by the Research and Innovation in Social Work Group (GRITS) of the UB School of Social Work, headed by researcher Violeta Quiroga, and is funded by the POCTEFA 2021-2027 European programme.
The launch of the project took place with a double day, in the Historical Building and the Mundet Campus of the UB, in which more than one hundred people from different administrations, social entities and universities from the three regions took part.
The project
Over the three years of coParticiPA, almost thirty organisations, training institutions and public bodies will work collaboratively on the design, prototyping and evaluation of a cross-border participation programme. The main objective is to strengthen community ties and promote the empowerment of people in vulnerable situations, to facilitate their active involvement in decision-making and the management of social resources in their respective communities.
The project aims to focus on basic social services and six specialised areas of social intervention: childhood and adolescence; ageing; migration; disability, health and mental health; social exclusion and community action; and university and continuing education.
Main actions
The coParticiPA project has three main lines of action. Firstly, a collaborative diagnosis will be carried out to analyse the needs and capacities for action of all the agents involved (people assisted, professionals, management positions, etc.) in each of the participating territories. This phase includes a qualitative study, with more than 1,500 participants from various fields of social intervention, which is the basis on which to build a cross-border programme of people's participation (PTP-P).
The second phase of the project consists of creating and piloting the PTP-P. This process includes the development of a digital tool for intervention processes promoted by various agents, which will be complemented by a pedagogical resource kit. The pilot of this tool will be carried out with more than 1,500 agents from all the territories and intervention areas participating in the project.
Finally, the third and last phase of the project consists of a process of evaluation of the implementation and results of the pilot test of the PTP-P, which should also serve to identify the key aspects and possible obstacles for transferring it to other territories.
