International Careleaving Dialogue Austria

The EU project "CareLeaving Dialog" is an Erasmus+ project in the category "Structured Dialogue" and has been selected as a Good Practice Project by the Austrian National Agency.

The leading organization is FICE Austria, project partners are the BJV; Federal Youth Council - Coordination Office for Youth Dialogue and the DÖJ, umbrella organization of Austrian child and youth welfare institutions.

In this project adolescent and young adult "Care Leavers" are empowered to evaluate their own situation, opinions and wishes with regard to their transition into a socially and professionally integrated and independent life. Based on the needs and the necessary support, the young people develop proposals for solutions and demands and discussed these in direct dialogue with experts and political decision-makers.

The dialogue process was prepared and organized with the Care Leavers at state and federal level. In the 1st part there were three participation workshops held in Innsbruck, Klagenfurt and Tulln. Afterwards the County dialogues took place and in the “result-workshop”, the experiences were collected and nine universal demands to the government as well as a brochure for the presentation of these were elaborated.

At the final conference of the project, the Care Leavers were once again able to enter into dialogue with the relevant decision-makers from politics and the professional world with their concrete demands and suggestions. In addition, experts and care leavers from Germany and the Netherlands were invited to present and discuss best practices from the EU region.

Additionally, the young people took part in a Media-Workshop and created poems and took photos to reflect their situation and demands, which was exhibited in the House of the European Union and shown to the politicians and participants during conference.