Social inclusion is one of the main principles of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Schools, workplaces, neighbourhoods and communities have the aim of performing the inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities and common efforts are in progress. Nevertheless there are still walls separating these citizens from the establishment of relationship with others people and from active participation in the society.

Disability care organisations can support this process and therefore encourage the active participation in society with positive impacts on the development of meaningful relationships.

In doing so, disability care organisations are faced with ever-shifting challenges in aligning its structures with social inclusion:

Along with the task of providing support, safety, and protection for people with disabilities, they should also empower them to facilitate their participation in society and to establish relationships with other people. Person-centred approaches have proven to be helpful in accomplishing these goals with the interests of the supported people at heart. Individuals are always at the centre of these approaches, valuing their role as citizens.

Shifting challenges also call for organisations to change.

The overall aim of project COESI is to bring self-empowerment and social inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities into the focus of disability care and to reveal and facilitate the organisational transformation process of disability care organisations.

COESI tackles this endeavour on various levels.

Forms of assistance for people with intellectual disabilities will be further developed in order to enhance the possibilities to establish relationships in their social environment.

Additional training opportunities for experts in the disability field will be created.

Strategies and recommendations for service providers in disability care will be formulated.

In the conceptualisation and development of all COESI project results, management, employees and people with disabilities will be involved. Their know-how and expertise are of crucial value to the project’s success.

Over the course of two years, from November 2017 to November 2019, Lebenshilfen SD from Austria coordinates the EU project COESI – Change Organizations to Enable Social Inclusion on a European level in close cooperation with four disability care organizations from Germany, Portugal, Spain, and Slovenia.

For more information please visit the project’s website:

www.coesi-project.eu