In the USA our colleagues are struggling to achieve recognition and a fair pay for what they do.  This is an extract of the most recent newsletter from the National Alliance for Direct Support Professionals (NADSP) in America:

“The National Alliance for Direct Support Professionals (NADSP) has been working to enhance the status of direct support professionals and promote the development of a highly competent human services workforce for more than fifteen years. As the leading advocacy organization that represents 1.2 million direct support professionals who support people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, we strongly support the United States Department of Labor’s proposed regulations (RIN 1235-AA05) to ensure that all direct support workers receive the same labor protections as other American workers.

Fewer people are being drawn to direct support as a career due to extremely low entry-level wages, where the national average is $9.40 per hour, while turnover and vacancy rates remains extraordinarily high. Given that the average Direct Support Professional may be a single parent of two children or more, many of these workers qualify for public assistance, are uninsured and are forced to work more than one job to make ends meet.”

To learn more about the issues and problems faced by our American colleagues, continue reading here.

Fair Start – a free e-learning and organizational development program for orphanages and foster families in quality care giving.

The free online education program in quality orphan care is now spreading from Europe to 3rd World countries.

The program was developed in the European Union project www.fairstart.net and tested by orphanages and foster family managers in 7 EU countries for two years, before launching the 15 session education www.fairstart.net/training  for staffs and orphan care leaders, in 8 language versions (English, German, Romanian, Turkish, Spanish, Italian, Catalan and Greek).

The sessions demonstrate quality infant stimulation, attachment based care and social organization of daily life to ensure continuity in care. Video examples of quality care – produced by participants – makes the program hands-on and practical, it’s child care research transformed into simple principles of quality care. Have a look!

Thanks to volunteer researchers and caregivers, many new language versions are being produced: Arabian, Brazilian Portuguese, Bahasa (Indonesia), Bulgarian, Burmese, Egyptian, Ethiopian, French, Hungarian, Karen, Latvian, Persian, Polish, Russian, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Mandarin Chinese, Urdu, Vietnamese.

In this paper, read further about the background of Fair Start and find instructions on how to use www.fairstart.net/training for educational and organizational development. Feel free to use this tool for your professional development and child care work.

For those of you who understand French, the Swiss series “Les editions ies” have released a new book that focuses on the educational activities created for and performed by adults with intellectual disabilities.

La vitalisation au cœr de l’intervention – Analyse d’activités éducatives auprès d’adultes en situation de handicap psychique

To read more about the book and make your order, please see the flyer.

APEG, the national federation of social educators in Luxembourg who are hosting the World congress in 2013, have published their 2^nd newsletter about the progress in preparations for the congress.

18th January: Meeting with the Minister of Family and Integration and with the Minister of Gender Equality and Tourism

Five members representing the Organization Committee of World Congress 2013 have been received by Mrs Jacobs, Minister of Family and Integration and Mrs Hetto-Gaasch, social pedagogue and Minister of Gender Equality and Tourism.  In a very friendly atmosphere, the first budget estimation has been introduced to the two ministers, who consider themselves as partners who try to take responsibility for the success of AIEJI World Congress next year. Representative for the government of the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg, the two ministers will stand up for some financial support for the realization of the event. During the next weeks, the OC will work on more detailed financial estimations concerning major costs of the event in order to present a new version of the budget for the end of February.

To read more, go to the APEG’s website.

On 9 – 11 May this year, FESET holds a seminar on the process of going from being a student to working as a professional: “From student to professional: learning by acting and reflecting”.

In the process of transition from student to professional worker, at least three milestones are faced by students, educators and researchers: transition from college/university to practice placement, integration of acquired analytical and practical competences to overall learning process at college/university and transition from college/university to professional work placement.  There are many actors who can facilitate or burden the process: the student, college/university teacher, tutor, supervisor, researcher, employer, and other stakeholders.

And there are many ways to learn. The seminar focuses on learning by acting and reflecting using the well-known triangular figure head-heart-hands: how this principle could support and enrich learning in times of changes? How do we relate analytical and practical knowledge in never ending changes of social life?

Read more about the seminar here.

New Public Resistance
Recent months have seen a range of protests in different Western countries. In Greece, Spain, England and now Wall Street, the streets have been full of people protesting, showing their resistance: resistance towards the distribution of resources; resistance towards the lack of democracy in modern decision making; resistance towards structural and institutional changes. But how is this resistance to be understood? And which educational, institutional and pedagogical lessons can be drawn from these resistance movements? This is the conceptual framework for the next CONCRIT conference in Barcelona, May 2012.

The conference will take place in Barcelona starting at 6pm on Friday 18 May and finishing on Sunday 20 at 3pm. It is a participatory conference and workshops will develop according to participants’ own ideas, interests, short inputs that they want to make, group work and any visits that they care to make. The conference will be outdoors in a public space and the venue is yet to be announced. There is no cost for participation at the conference. You can start your participation now by logging on to our Facebook site where you can begin developing themes and identifying issues that you would like to discuss, share or contribute to the conference.

CONCRIT is a network of practitioners, students, educators, researchers, employees in local authorities, NGOs, trade union activists, artists and others with an interest in and knowledge of children, young people and adults. The network is concerned with their welfare and the educational and social policy and practice that affect them.

Read more about the conference and CONCRIT here.

For those of you working in child and youth care services I want to highlight the international network of Child and Youth Care, CYC-Net. If you sign up to CYC-Net’s discussion groups you will receive posts and comments on a wide range of topics and issues related to working in child and youth care while you can also post comments and questions and start a discussion yourself.

As such, the network is a great place to meet colleagues from other countries online and share your thoughts, questions and experiences. For example, today there is a post from a woman working at the university of Essex calling out for papers that draw on current projects or recently completed work using oral history and related methods, which address the themes of disrupted and traumatic childhoods. Another post enquires about a certain link to a lecture by Henri Maier. Other topics will relate more directly to everyday practice.

To read more about the Child and Youth Care Network and sign up for their discussion group, please read here.

It is with great delight that we can now present a written version of the presentation that Rosa Maria Torres gave at the AIEJI world congress in Copenhagen, May 2009.

For those of you who were there, you will remember this great presentation about how the tradition of social education is different between Europe and Latin America and among the countries within each region and how the social educator is also a political agent.

Rosa Maria Torres has established a blog about education and this is also where you will find her AIEJI presentation.