Empirically informing a European theory of justice is a complex and challenging endeavour, however the emergence of current social crisis, and the resulting inequalities and unfairness, bring about the need to revise the premises that facilitate translation of the theory into concrete guidance to effective social policies and coherent programs and practices. To respond to this challenge, a trans-disciplinary Consortium has been organized to provide a comprehensive series of empirical data, in different ecological levels, in order to understand differences in perceptions of inequality. Through a case study on an extreme expression of inequality and unfairness - LONG-TERM HOMELESSNESS – organized in a multi-method and convergent design, HOME_EU is focused on understanding: a) How much inequality do EU Citizens accept regarding Homelessness; b) How the people with a lived-experience of Homelessness (both present and past) perceive the opportunities, choices and capability gains with the services and the existing social policies; c) What strategies consider the service providers to be more effective in reversing Homelessness; d) How social policies and policy key stakeholders contribute to effectively reverse Homelessness; and e) Develop a generalizable indicator (correlating the different ecological levels of analysis) based on the data gathered by each partner country on the key elements of policy and program efficacy. We believe that with this journey into an extreme situation, we are able to generate translational knowledge about the ecology of long-term Homelessness and contribute towards the advancement of an empirically based EU theory & practice of justice as fairness.

Homelessness is a major challenge for all EU Member States. The European Consensus Conference on Homelessness (Brussels, December 2010)*, the EU 2020 strategy and Social Investment Package**, and the Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council (EPSCO)*** all recommend ambitious, innovative, evidence-based policy, with the specific objectives of: -significantly reducing the time people remain homeless -significantly reducing the number of homeless people -rapid access to housing. The Housing First model (integration of the most vulnerable homeless people through access to housing) is repeatedly cited as a policy capable of meeting these objectives. Housing First is the first choice for the majority of European countries equipped with a policy to tackle homelessness. Member States began working on this initiative in 2008. In Belgium, the public and private institutions came together in a consortium in September 2013 to test out Housing First and decide how it will be implemented, as appropriate to the context on the ground in Belgium: the HOUSING FIRST BELGIUM experiment (www.housingfirstbelgium.be). Practicians of Housing First across Europe face similar challenges on the ground: working with a network of local partners, adapting support to specific needs in the field of drug addiction and mental health, organising day-to-day work with adequate tools, accessing/creating housing, working towards socio-professional integration in the community, etc. While there are fora for institutions and public authorities to share experiences (peer review, conferences, HF Europe HUB, etc.), those working on the ground rarely meet and have no access to trainings that meets their specific needs. Too often, practicians of Housing First are left to play it by ear. Housing First Belgium LAB-Mobility, the current mobility project for Housing First workers, aims to respond to individual, institutional and political needs observed in Belgium, while setting up a new network of Housing First practicians across 9 European countries: Belgium, Portugal, Spain, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland and Norway. *ec.europa.eu/social/BlobServlet?docId=6489&langId=fr **http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=1061 *** The Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council (EPSCO) of the 20-21 June 2015.

The project will be implemented through Job-Shadowing activities in 5 partner countries involved in our project: Spain, Hungary, Macedonia, Czech Republic and Belgium. The duration of the project is 1 year, project will start on 1st of July 2017 and end on 30th of April 2018. HVO-Querido will send 10 staff members to our partner organizations for job shadowing, where they will learn the methods and tools which are used by our partners. This model is a great opportunity for us to provide wider range of development and learning schemes to our staff members. More concrete benefits in terms of learning outcomes and personal development are to learn the following aspects of the daily work in our partner organizations: - What is meant as success in our partners work? - What are the good practices that work well also now? - What is the organizational structure of our partners? - What are the working methods and what is the working structure of our partners? - What is the financial structure of our partners? - Which stakeholders are included in our partners work? Project objectives are: - Learning working methodologies of each partner organization - Collect information which will help improving our working methodologies in HVO-Querido - Collecting and sharing success stories of partner organizations - Enhancing image and the power of success as a base within social work - Encourage the passion and motivation among partner organizations in relations within social work - Collecting evaluation data from field work during project cycle - Establishing Online platform for sharing information among partners Chronology of the activities are as follows: September 2017 - Job-Shadowing of 2 staff members in Czech Republic, October 2017 Job-Shadowing of 2 staff members in Hungary, November 2017 Job-Shadowing of 2 staff members in Spain, February 2018 Job-Shadowing of 2 staff members in Macedonia, March 2018 Job-Shadowing of 2 staff members in Belgium. The project’s learning outcomes are expected to raise the following competences: - Innovative methods and tools for Housing - Innovative methods and tools for Care - Innovative methods and tools for Guidance - Communication skills, communication in foreign language - Presentation skills - Sharing and implementing new idea’s - Professional and personal development - Group dynamics - Thinking out of the box and finding ways to make things possible - Awareness of individual strength and empowerment within the working field and the position you take - Understand and describe individual profiles (social workers) towards the ‘chosen’ matching by clients - Stimulate creativity within social work -versus- traditional social work - Improving sense of initiative - Encourage passion and enthusiasm The expected impact of this project: * Increase qualification and improving competences in Care, Guidance and Housing of 10 staff members from HVO-Querido * First hand knowledge and experience of new methods and approaches in European partner countries * Updated Discus methodology with new tools for our target group in Amsterdam * Visibility of Discus Methodology and recognition on the European level * Visibility and recognition of Erasmus+ programme * Stronger partnership among social organizations and local governments in Europe Employability of the staff involved and the indirect target group of our project: We are expecting to bring direct positive impact not only on the actual learners but hundreds of homeless people with whom these professionals are working. Improved knowledge and experience will also benefit better professionalize and employability of our staff to higher positions in the carrier development. Employability is also considered as one of the components of our methodology improvement since we would like to intensify our efforts to raise chances of employability of the homeless people we work with. - Raising motivation and self awareness - Inter-cultural awareness The expected impact of this project: * Increase qualification and improving competences in Care, Guidance and Housing of 10 staff members from HVO-Querido * First hand knowledge and experience of new methods and approaches in European partner countries * Updated Discus methodology with new tools for our target group in Amsterdam * Visibility of Discus Methodology and recognition on the European level * Visibility and recognition of Erasmus+ programme * Stronger partnership among social organizations and local governments in Europe

This project was initiated based on the analyses of the the research and evaluation conducted during our KA1 Job Shadowing project which we are implementing since July 2017, we came to the conclusion that all partners involved in our project identify one common issue that is still difficult to deal with due to various objective reasons. This issue is LONELINESS among beneficiaries of each partner organization including HVO-Querido. When we set to discuss the possibilities of working together to improve our work and methodology in general, we decided to develop this KA2 Strategic partnership project which would give us an opportunity to work together in innovative methods and tools to educate equip our beneficiaries with competences (Knowledge, Skills and Attitude) on how to overcome loneliness on the emotional and social level. At the same time it is our interest to develop the professional world that works in this field, such as social work professionals on individual and organizational level (e.g. our employees, partner organizations), research and educational institutions, health care organizations and governments. PPROJECT OBJECTIVES ARE: 1) Enrich the offer of free tools which contribute to the professional development of social workers in dealing with loneliness. 2) Provide long term training programme for beneficiaries and evaluate the final results 3) Use ICT tools to facilitate the engagement of our employees with beneficiaries 4) Increase the level of digital competence among beneficiaries and encourage them to use more digital tools 5) Promote training modules and tools among professionals in the field, locally and internationally TARGET GROUP: -> Housing First Programme clients (our Beneficiaries) 210 Person -> Social Workers (our Employees) 100 person -> Trainers Social Work Professionals (our trainers pool memebers and memebers of associated partners) 350 person through multiplier events and 2500 person though online platfom. EXPECTED RESULTS 1. Training Module for professionals to learn about loneliness phenomena and innovative ways to deal with the issue 2. Toolbox of Innovative methods/activities for tackling loneliness among the clients. 3. Development of the online Web Platform as a common space for professionals and clients to share, learn and support each other in tackling loneliness 4. Impact report after 6 months of implementing the new methodology INNOVATIVE ASPECT OF THE PROJECT We would like to focus on the clients, taking them by the hand, social worker as bridge in connecting people to projects for loneliness. What differentiates us from already existing projects which are dealing with the topic of social inclusion, is that we already have an existing target group, with high prevalence of loneliness. The advantage is that we can build on the relationships that we already have and be more effective in tackling this issue from the bottom. We want to add new innovative elements related to loneliness to housing first methodology, where main elements of the Housing First approach have to be seen in contrast to approaches requiring “treatment first” and/or moving homeless people through a series of stages (staircase system) before they are “housing ready”. Housing First diverts radically from these approaches, which have been criticized for being ineffective in ending homelessness for people with severe and complex needs and having unintentional negative effects. Housing First seeks to move home-less people into permanent housing as quickly as possible with on-going, flexible and individual support as long as it is needed, but on a voluntary basis.