V-I-T - Networking - Interaction - Participation

Within the framework of the Federal Participation Act (§ 11 SGB IX), the possibility was created to implement model projects to strengthen rehabilitation. The Job Centre Darmstadt (gE) and the municipal Job Centre Kreis Groß-Gerau (AöR) are participating in the corresponding funding programme "Innovative Ways to Participate in Working Life - rehapro" with the project "V-I-T - Networking - Interaction - Participation." The ITA and the Institute for Social Pedagogical Research Mainz (ism) are responsible for the scientific monitoring and evaluation of V-I-T.

Despite intensive efforts on the part of the two job centres, it became apparent that even a receptive labour market, as existed in the Rhine-Main region in the years before the Covid 19 pandemic, did not enable beneficiaries with severe health problems to take up work to the extent hoped for. The partners will therefore develop and test an innovative concept for this target group.

The target group of the project are benefit recipients with mental impairments and/or dependency disorders aged 25 and over from the municipal Job Centre Groß-Gerau and the Job Centre Darmstadt.

The project focuses on two funding policy goals: "Maintaining or restoring earning capacity" and "improving social and occupational participation". The core of the project is the establishment of an innovative organisational structure including comprehensive networking and the testing of innovative individual services.

The innovative services and/or measures tested should be suitable for:

• to maintain or restore earning capacity,
• to counteract an imminent (partial) reduction in earning capacity,
• to improve social and professional participation,
• enable people to find employment that meets their needs,
• to reduce reservations in the recruitment of people with health impairments on the part of social and occupational actors,
• to provide intensive counselling and support for people with health problems who are capable of working,
• identify the abilities (to be restored) of people with health impairments and use these as a basis for action planning, and
• to relieve the social environment of people with health impairments.

In order to better support health-impaired beneficiaries, expert counselling and support from a single source is needed. Therefore, interdisciplinary counselling teams are being established. They consist of experts from the fields of health coaching, medical counselling, psychological counselling and the labour market. The focus is on coaching and individual cooperation with the participants.

The scientific monitoring and evaluation by the ITA and the ism covers a broad spectrum of goals and methodological approaches. The project structure and the project and team development are supported by a highly demand-oriented and differentiated process of process support. The evaluation has a formative and summative function. It takes into account the most diverse perspectives on the funding approach, including those of the target group itself, of coaches and of actors in the social space.