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method
The aim of the method is to support immigrants in becoming active members of society, in line with their competencies. It offers tools for social workers and volunteers who work with immigrants.
The method is based on valuable elements of already existing methods in the three participating countries. It is build from several modules, so it can easily be adapted to different national contexts and different individual situations.
The model is build along four main lines:
- basic practical needs,
- basic social and emotional needs,
- the need to achieve quality of life,
- neighbourhood and community development.
The intake is the overall start of the method. At this stage, it is decided what the specific needs of the immigrant are and which tailor-made package of modules from the method suits them.
- Basic practical needs
This involves giving information about and teaching participants to cope with essential conditions of life, such as a house to live in, money to buy food and clothes. Finding one’s way to cope with the bureaucracy in the new country is an important element of this part.
- Basic social and emotional needs
This part describes methods that help immigrants cope with emotions that limit their options to integrate. The social worker learns to recognize symptoms, so that he can refer the immigrant to a specialist for emotional support if expert treatment is required. In the meantime, he can keep working with him on other subjects.
- The need to achieve quality of life
These modules refer to the possibility to participate ´in line with ones competencies´. Integration implies more than just survival. The social worker or volunteer coaches the immigrant to extend the knowledge and capabilities he brings from his home country and find a way to use them to his best advantage in his new country. He is assisted in defining his own goals. Networks are valuable for the achievement of purposes in life. Most immigrants lost their networks when leaving their own country. Volunteers can be helpful in building a new one and sometimes they themselves are the first contact.
- Neighbourhood and community development
Integration has to be a two-way process in which not only the immigrant has to adapt. Discrimination exists in all participating countries. It is very difficult to integrate if people don’t get a job, when their name looks foreign and if they are not allowed in discos because of the colour of their skin. These modules offer tools to fight discrimination, solve problems with all relevant partners in a neighbourhood and work with cultural centres, where people can meet and get to know each other. Work with volunteers is also included in this section, because volunteers often build the first bridge between the immigrant and the rest of the population.
The draft version of the method will be tried out by the participating institutions and the final version will be completed in October 2005.
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