Educating the educators involved in homebound training and work inclusion

Abstract

Subjects with physical and sensory disabilities are frequently alienated from the social and production contexts. This type of alienation may lead to the worsening of the disabled subjects' health conditions and an impoverishment of their human relations, which in turn might cause identity crises and a tendency to greater dependence on others, culminating in loss of inclination and ability to learn new skills. Since 2013, the SCINTILLA project of the Liguria Region (Italy) has set out to study how information and communication technology can be used to support work inclusion processes for subjects with congenital or acquired physical disabilities which make it difficult for them to move around (hence the common definition "homebound"). This paper will deal with one of the key aspects of the project, i.e. how to educate the educators whose task is to train and accompany young homebound subjects with serious physical disabilities in the process of work inclusion. The specific aim of the paper is to describe the assessment model adopted by SCINTILLA for the training programme, which is inspired by Kirkpatrick's four-level evaluation model. It will thus describe (a) the training programme conceived for educators called upon to train homebound subjects for insertion into companies with the "smart work" approach; and (b) the model worked out for evaluation of the above training programme, a sort of transversal model comprising formal, nonformal and informal learning dimensions.