This project was designed after an initial scoping exercise of national supports for parents in Ireland during transitions. Evidence shows that risk factors for successful transitions can be mitigated by a continuum of protective factors and thus support successful transitions. Exploring and addressing both universal and targeted supports will be prioritised in this project to reduce disparities among children from different backgrounds in accessing and engaging with formal and non-formal education. This project seeks to explore parents awareness and experiences of supports available to them and their children during the transition from pre-school to primary school, with a particular focus on parents of children living in disadvantage and/or vulnerable circumstances. The primary aim is to develop a support programme for parents to support their children during this transition and delivered by practitioners. Evidence shows that poor transitions affect children throughout their education and can have negative impacts on a persons long-term outcomes. Research shows that the approaches taken by pre-schools and primary schools range and differ significantly. This project seeks to improve transitions by enhancing awareness and skills of practitioners to enable parents to support children during this stage, and to do this in a pan European context. This project will carry out a literature review to identify existing services and supports, gaps in supports and transitions programme with the potential for implementation across Europe, quantitative survey research, and qualitative focus groups. The findings will be analysed and a suite of recommendations for supports will be made. The recommendations will lead directly to the development of a training programme and an online resource. The pilot programme ensures that a process of testing the materials will be implemented prior to finalising the programme and resource. Objectives of the project; -to complete a literature review and scoping exercise on evidence and best practice in supporting children’s transition from early years services to school including universal provision and targeted initiatives for the four participating countries. This includes identifying the policy, professional development and practice context in relation to supporting transitions in each participating country. - through consultation (surveys and focus groups) identify parental needs and how practitioners can most effectively provide them with information and support. -to develop resources which are accessible and relevant for both universal and targeted services-to develop a pilot train the trainer programme for teachers and early years practitioners to enable them to better support parents in managing children’s transition to primary school-review the results of the pilot to consider feedback of practitioners -produce high quality training materials and online resources that are relevant, accurate and easily accessibleThere are four participating programme countries. Each programme country will produce or collaborate to produce each intellectual output. Each of the four programme countries will administer parents surveys with a planned response of 100 per country. These parents will be representative of a general parent population of children aged 3-6. In each participating country there will a series of focus groups help with approximately 30 parents in each country. These parents will be representative of parents 'with fewer opportunities'. In total, 120 focus group participants, representing the vulnerable/ disadvantaged cohorts will participate. Over three Train the Train multiplier events delivered in three countries, 60 training attendees being either teachers or early years practitioners will be trained in the support programme using the developed materials and resources and will consulted for their feedback. The results envisaged include:-increased awareness, understanding and capacity by professionals and parents to support children during transition to primary school .-Increased understanding of what parents needs to help them support their children during transition to primary school. -the development of training resources/ materials and an accompanying training programme for professionals. -400 parents consulted with through surveys-120 parents consulted with through focus groups-60 professionals in three countries trained to deliver a support programme to parents. -An open online/ digital resources containing all documentation, including survey templates and final reports, and the complete training programme manualsThe potential longer term benefits include:Increased volume of professional delivering the support programme to parentsIncreased number of parents availing of the support programmeImproved quality and understanding of transitions and the issues impacting theseSustained levels of engagement by practitioners on Train the trainer programme

To take advantage of civil activity and community movement, which is gaining momentum worldwide, we believe that next decade is the very moment for democratic involvement of parents and students into the management of school and education in general.Parents are the key players in creating the environment for the child’s development. In order to participate in developing the school environment, the parent must take responsibility by participating in decision-making processes. Parents as decision makers must be educated and competent. Society needs a national education program for parents and other school board members, the keywords of which are communication skills (development and conflict management) and cooperation (collegial management).Estonian Parents' Association (EstPA) has been actively and systematically trained school boards since 2006 and practically all Estonian schools have been visited and altogether about 10,000 school community members have been trained. There have been met many school boards who are ready to take on more responsibility, as well as heads of schools and members of the local governments who would be willing to grant more rights to school board if they only knew how to do it correctly in terms of the laws and sustainability. Studies show that school leaders are often in a very difficult situation where each stakeholder (municipality, teachers, students and parents) demands their own and the principal’s preparation for a creative solution is not good enough. Therefore, our first task is to help school leaders to better implement the democratic governance model at school and at the same time prepare parents and the school board to unleash their potential.In this project are involved five schools from Saaremaa municipality, all together 1955 (60,1%) of all islands students. That means more than thousand families. Working together with principals and the local government, a systemic approach will be developed together with international group of scientists and other professionals.As an important part of the project, completely new school - Saaremaa State Gymnasium -will be developed based on two upper secondary schools in project. This process has so far been very arduous because neither school community wants to give up its long-standing tradition in local cultural life. The project promoters have undertaken their own mission of helping to create a third, the new culture in peaceful co-operation between the two communities and public at large, bringing as many young people as possible, who have gone to the mainland, to return to their home island later, to create a family.Thus, the project is not just aimed at giving the school board the right to make more decisions, but to create cooperative assumptions that directly affect the sustainability of local cultural life. One of the most important short-term goals of our project is to train a group of mentors-mediators who have the appropriate personal qualities and sufficient life experience to be prepared to create the prerequisites for a consciously focused peaceful transformation process in different school communities at different stages of development.However, if we look at the long term, then this project has impact on at least five levels - citizen, family, educational institution, local government and state level:1. project will give the active parents and students an entirely new potential to be involved in the management of an educational institution and systematically improve their competence;2. project involves more than thousand families and creates the prerequisites for the rapid growth of their communication skills and ability to cooperate - it will benefit the improvement of relations between different generations;3. collegial management enables the inclusion of a larger number of competent people in the school life cycle; instead of power struggle, energy will go towards cooperation;4. school board and principal together as community management team will become a trusted partner for local government;5. at the national level, we dare to predict that the described process will create the necessary prerequisites for a formation of new generation of politicians who have contributed voluntarily to the community for many years and who understand local and educational life and are therefore able to establish and maintain productive relationships in a community-based way.To be honest, we believe that this project needs proper practical testing in Estonia and then distribution across Europe and elsewhere. Companies with no single decision makers are recognized with the Leadership Innovation Awards. That’s the reason we believe the idea of empowering the school boards to be a very timely and powerful tool for triggering change of management culture at grassroots level. From our point of view this is a peaceful way from learning organization to learning society.

Facilite un breve resumen de su proyecto. Recuerde que esta sección (o parte de ella) podrá ser utilizada por la Comisión Europea, la Agencia Ejecutiva o la Agencia Nacional en sus publicaciones. El resumen se volcará también a la Plataforma de Resultados de Proyectos Erasmus+. Sea conciso y breve, y mencione al menos los elementos siguientes: contexto del proyecto, objetivos del proyecto, número y perfil de los participantes, descripción de las actividades previstas, metodología utilizada para llevar a cabo el proyecto, una breve descripción de los resultados y del impacto esperados así como de los posibles beneficios a largo plazo.Child sexual abuse is a form of children maltreatment that affects one out of five children in Europe (Europe Council, 2011). Many studies have shown that it can have a negative impact in the academic performance of children and can hamper the acquisition of key competences, especially social competences. Child sexual abuse also has severe physical and psychological consequences, both short and long-term. The Project Children’s rights, UP! Preventing child sexual abuse through the promotion of key competences and healthy behaviors in young children from all cultures has as its main priority to develop a program for the prevention of child sexual abuse in early ages. It will be a high-quality program, efficient and realistic and will target the preschoolers’ classrooms taking into account the different cultural, religious and social sensitivities in Europe. The objectives of the project are to: 1) improve the acquisition of key competences of boys and girls from 4 to 5 years old, emphasizing the development of social skills; 2) encourage the sexual education of boys and girls from 4 to 5 years old, promoting health; 3) overcome the existing obstacles for the development of child sexual abuse prevention programs from early ages, such as the ones posed by families, professionals and organizations; 4) offer the necessary tools so that teachers can prevent and address situations of child sexual abuse in their classrooms; 5) offer tools to families for the prevention of childhood sexual abuse from their daily life through the promotion of children’s health and well-being.The project target groups are the early childhood education teachers, 4 and 5 years old children and their families. It will be implemented mainly in pluricultural environments with families from different origin, cultures, religious and socioeconomic level. The project will use a participative methodology including the target groups in the products development through: 8 participative workshops with preescolar children from 4 different countries; 4 focus group to check and contribute to improve the first version of the project results (composed by people that were sexual abused in their childhood; experts on early childhood education; experts on sexual education in early ages and finally parents from different cultures and religions) and finally, the project will also implement a pilot test in eight schools from four countries with teachers, children and their families. Under the project framework, five products will be developed: a didactic guide to prevent the child sexual abuse in early ages for teachers; Two tales to prevent the child sexual abuse in early ages; An online course to prevent the child sexual abuse in early ages addressed to teachers; A prevention kit addressed to families and an awareness raising kit about the project topics and issues.Two national Seminars in Spain and Finland, one European Seminar in Italy and a European Final Conference in Brussels will be organized to present the main project results and contributions. The project expects to make visible the necessity to tackle the prevention of child sexual abuse and the sexual education in early ages both from schools and families. It also expects to show how the prevention programme can improve also the key competences from social area and the academic results of all children at long term.

The implementation of differentiated educational programs for Persons With Intellectual Disabilities (PWID), as well as the quality of training for the professionals who support them, have traditionally been the main focus of policies aiming to enhance the social inclusion of PWID. Action-taking focusing on the parents' knowledge base has not received equal attention, despite the fact that it is widely recognized, that parents play a significant role in the life of their children. The ELPIDA project aimed to fill this gap by providing tailor made training to parents of PWID in order to enhance the support they provide to their children and enable them to positively influence the quality of their life. The project's overall goal was the empowerment of PWID to a better quality of life. The project concept is founded on the assumption that parental support is a key vehicle for improving the lives of persons with Intellectual Disability (ID) and on such a base set its goal to be the provision of parental support. In ELPIDA the provision of parental support takes the form of professionally developed learning resources accessible through a Learning Platform. The specific themes/topics addressed by the resources were defined through interaction between the project partners and persons with Intellectual Disability in the forms of focus group discussions and data gathering. The process concluded to a set of six thematic units which constitute the projects set of stand alone modules and address the themes of Human Rights, Communication, Stress Management, Transition to Adulthood, Sexual Health, Ageing. The drafting of the contents was driven by a learning objective perspective. The resources put in place feature multimedia elements and are supplemented with reflective questions for parents which in turn are addressed with rigorous evaluated contents. The six modules developed in Moodle can be followed/attended on a participants' preference order, each complemented with pre-post assessment tools. The set of modules and complemented features are accessible through the ELPIDA Learning Platform (http://www.elpida-project.eu/index.php/en/) which is available in seven linguistic versions (Danish, English, French, German, Greek, Norwegian, Portuguese). The Platform has been used by approximately 400 parents and the up to date results suggest acceptance by the target group it is intended for. On interest is that the Platform, to a rather high degree, is accessed through mobile phones. The concepts embedded in the project concern and the outcomes of 24 months activity context implemented, besides the wide dissemination undertaken by the partnership (conferences, events, distribution of dissemination material, communication with parents and NGOs) having reached approximately 10.000 stakeholders, have also gained the acceptance of professionals in the area of care and policy through an Event hosted in the European Parliament. The latter gave rise to interest by large Associations whose sphere of activity addresses issues on ID. The project has also been honored to be selected as an example of good practice by the European Commission that published the project's results at the April's editorial of School Education Gateway, as well as to be shortlisted for an award by the Zero Project initiative. It is of interest that the learning resources have been assessed as being appropriate for university courses in social work and nursery.The partnership attended to the above in a highly collaborative manner and attests its interest to further pursue its efforts towards enhancing the learnability potential (with state-of- the- art resources) to parents and caretakers of persons with intellectual disability.

"Family Skills project is based on a clear need identified during the planning and design of the intervention activities, of a lack of actions to support positive parenting, based on scientific evidence and innovative learning methodologies, which are considered necessary in the asset of parenting skills. Through an analysis of the needs carried out by the consortium, it emerged that parenting skills, at a socio-political level, have been strictly empathised in cases of high risk, while there is no common strategy and concept of prevention of discomfort, which is based on a strengthening of parenting skills, especially with respect to new parents and new families.In order to overcome these difficulties, the Family Skills project foresees a specific support and training action addressed to public and private operators (as adult educators) called to organize and manage training courses of parenting skills, and to sensitise parents' orientation and motivation to participate.It seems necessary to review the structure and provision of parental and adult educator-training/education, foreseeing cutting-edge solutions, thanks to the use of digital technologies and innovative tools; for this motivation, the training material will be realized for a full online usability, that includes the use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) techniques: these training delivery techniques have proved to be, according to the scientific literature of the last years, much more effective in terms of achieving learning outcomes, for being experiential, immersive and influencing the individual's training.Specifically, the objectives of the Family Skills project are:- To help adults (parents, family members, social workers) to acquire the necessary skills to become effective educators;- To support parents in their children's education through learning pathways and empowerment of parental skills (but also of educators, teachers, and adults in general), characterized by interactive and innovative educational kits, which use virtual and immersive reality to foster skills development.- Increasing awareness and knowledge of the needs and development of children and families through audio-visuals and ICT materials, with particular emphasis on virtual reality as a tool for experiential learning.- To promote a public-private network ability of collaboration, to support parenthood through training, social and relational networking, also through the diffusion of self-organizing family models.Directing the results towards these objectives will allow to improve the parenting skills, the so called ""Family Skills"", through an active involvement of parents' groups and, at the same time, strengthening the personal and professional skills of those working in the educational sector. For this motivation our partnership, composed of public and private bodies from Italy, Romania, Belgium and Poland, through the project Family Skills intends to develop 3 intellectual outputs that consist in: the development of guidelines to design the training, aimed at the analysis of new training needs of the operators; in the implementation of a training path integrated with virtual reality and an exercise, through an active ""participation"" of the group of parents that exploits the interaction of the individuals, such as ""partner works"" specific and other activities addressed to the participant needs. The project idea also includes the use of a self-assessment tool, about individual Family Skills, through a digital interface tool. The project aims find a synthesis in an on-site experimentation that involves a group of parents (about 30) from each country, designed and implemented by the operators who will take part in a specific training."