Sixth meeting Olomuc

On March 10th-12th  2014, the sixth meeting of the VESTA project partner group took place. The representatives of Greece, the Czech Republic, Poland and Lithuania were present.

            The first day was planned for a visit at the Center run by the JDEME AUTISTŮM NAPROTI Association and the first project working session.            

            The JAN Association was called into being on parents' initiative in 2003. The Center offers a lot of varied forms of help to disabled persons and their parents, starting with individual/group therapies, specialist counseling, through social consulting, meetings of the families, to trainings of social skills. Sylva Koči, the head of early intervention, presented principles of therapeutic work, and the mothers of persons with autism shared their personal experience.

The project working sessions were devoted to

1.      projects outcomes:

a)      Interactive program (part: Office part is ready, other parts will be finished till June)

b)      E-learning platform prepared by Hiteco can be used as a manual for assistants. The parts given by Vilma Butkute  ready in pdf format have to be translated by each partner institution into national language to be download to the Moodle platform.

c)      Assistants training guide (prepared by Eva Urbanovska) – it’s both too long to be translated and lacked of the technical information. It was suggested to summarise this guide, make a brief description of the most crucial technical info related to each training part (up to 10 pages max). Such guide will be sent by Joanna Kossewska to each partners institution to translate it to national language.

d)     National language pieces (Lithuania) – we are still waiting for the Lithuanian translation of training materials.

e)      Leaflet (done by Domecek) – The leaflet has to be printed in national languages. Domecek is asked to send the word format leaflet to partners to be translated into national languages

2.      Dissemination:

Partners have to make a list of disseminating events (papers, presentations, lectures during conferences, ect)

Deadline: till next meeting (13.06.2014)

Proposals of dissemination: Conference 15-18 July 2014, Kaunas (International School Psychology Association). Vilma Butkuke is willing to present project poster

3.      The effectiveness of vocational training based on the project didactic methodology (part library) – Małgorzata Sowa

a.       The persons with ASD participated in the training for vocational skills in Library. The results of the effect of 10 session training procedure as well as long-lasting effects (after one month break) were presented. It was found that the VESTA didactic material were suitable the perceptual as well as learning processes by ASD persons.

b.      The English version of students booklet and brief instruction for teachers will be sent to partners by Polish team up to 30 of March.

c.       Partners have to carry out four parts of training (Library, Kitchen, Hotel, Office). The trainings of 11 sessions with 10 ASD trainees from each country have to be finished till the end of May. The national reports have to be presented during the partner meeting in Vilnues.

4.      Training course for Staff. Domecek has to carry out staff (assistant) training course and present the report based on the Assessment method prepared by Hiteco 

5.      Book In English – the proposal of additional outcome was discussed

a.      Procedure of publishing: like during the conference (monography)

b.      How to transfer the money? (banking transfers are expensive)

c.       Lithuania don’t want to publish the book

d.      Conclusion – the proposal was not accepted

6.      Evaluation

a.      Assessment method of Project realisation – DONE for interim report

b.      --- of didactic programme effectiveness – national reports will be presented at the final meeting

c.       --- of Staff training effectiveness – to be done by Hiteco and Anadrasis

d.      --- of Staff training effectiveness - will be done by Domecek

e.       --- of partner meeting – DONE

f.       External evaluation of program final version – to be done in July

7.      Questions, comments, proposals:

The future cooperation proposal was discussed

8.      Final meeting was accepted to be organized in Vilnius – 13-14 of June 2014. It is going to be the conference for school representatives to be familiar with VESTA outcomes.

9.      Each partner is kindly asked to follow the project agreement in reference to the outcomes the project consortium is obliged to get. If you find any disparity or anything to be complemented before the project end please do not hesitate to contact us urgently.