"The artistic practice in social work has undergone considerable development over the last decades. But the emergence of ""cultural"" activities still provokes mixed reactions: benevolent but often marked by indifference. Often considered as simple activities, they would only be there to embellish the institutions. This is not our point of view. Art and culture are essential in the work towards and with vulnerable persons, especially as art involves access to the Symbolic and then reflects the very foundation of the human. ""People with disabilities must be able to enjoy all fundamental rights"", as mentions the important French law of February, the 11nd 2005 on Equal Rights and Opportunities, Participation and Citizenship of People with Disabilities. Art and culture are part of this ethical and democratic demand. Yet, access to art and culture remains deeply unequal. And one knows how much the opportunities to access to culture and knowledge are often levers to an integrated social life. Access to art and culture for the disabled person represents a mean of emancipation, a path to self-determination for those who have difficulties to express themselves and a particular way of relating to others and the community. In other words, these cultural activities open to the understanding of the relationship between sensible knowledge and rational knowledge, between individual ""emotional area"" and the context in which it expresses itself. This reinforces the work on self-confidence and the power to act, that are so important for this audience - all that facilitated by the look of ""the others"", not only non-stigmatizing but also rewarding. The objectives of these mobilities are several: • Getting these persons out of the isolation or illness they are sometimes locked in by unconsciousness or the indifference of their environment. • Make them aware of their unexplored potentialities • Promote a better integration in society and the community by allowing them to go and meet art via exhibitions and other artistic representations artistiques on the one hand, and via activities and workshops allowing interactions on the other hand. • Protect from discrimination. • Share life experience. Opening to ""the other"" because, as Marcel Proust wrote it in « Le Temps Retrouvé » : « Par l’art seulement nous pouvons sortir de nous, savoir ce que voit un autre de cet univers qui n’est pas le même que le nôtre, et dont les paysages nous seraient restés aussi inconnus que ceux qu’il peut y avoir dans la lune. Grâce à l’art, au lieu de voir un seul monde, le nôtre, nous le voyons se multiplier ». ""Through art only we can get out of ourselves, know what another one sees in this universe which is not the same as ours, and whose landscapes would have remained as unknown to us as those that may be in the moon. Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world, ours, we see it multiply. "". This project named CHARME will bring together France, Romania, Belgium, Italy and Croatia, with 1 or 2 partners in each country. Its duration will be 23 months. The audience are people with mental disabilities or psychic disabilities, and the professional staff that accompany them. It will be structured on mobility stays associating people with disabilities and the professionals who accompany them. These stays have to last at least 3 days on site. These stays will be organized in turn by each partner country, which will welcome persons with disabilities and professionals from one country at at time. So each country would receive four times and send four groups. The total number of participants will be 7 persons with disabilities and 1 social workers accompanying them.. During these stays, the proposed activities could be visits to exhibitions, museums and other artistic representations on the one hand, and workshops allowing interactions on the other hand. Other activities planned specifically for professionals will be organized to allow the exchange of practices. The project may also involve management staff, administrators or even members of partner associations. They will also be able to participate in mobility stays."

The project had a partnership made of 5 European countries Italy, France, Belgium, Romania and Portugal, and had Fondazione IRPEA from Padua, Italy, as coordinator.The focus of the “DARE” pathway were the services for home assistance as central element to be reformed in the wider context of the assistance to the person, a choice motivated by the conviction that the support the persons in difficulty and their carers might receive at home influences their right to be cared at home, avoiding also the recoveries in residential structures, already not enough compared to the number of requests.The perspective of a change of paradigm in this sector, focused on the a holistic approach regarding the needs and the resources, was confirmed during the whole project. Starting from the obvious lack of dedicated public resources, in most of the European countries, and from the deep changes appeared in the modern families, the project facilitated the approach to very diversified initiatives.The 5 visits for the exchange of best practices – to Bucharest, Brussel, Bastia, Coimbra and Padua – involved 106 available places – but some of the professionals participated to more than one visit. The two internal Focus Groups (in Bucharest and Padua), the Final Workshop (Padua) and the intense exchanges via e-mail between the project coordinators of each partner confirmed that the objective of creating a “community of practice” had been reached: the group will continue to pay attention to the innovation in the sector of home and residential care and will search for opportunities of building projects centered on the transfer of best practices, perhaps also enlarging the partnership to other countries.The diversity of the professional profiles involved was another objective reached (directors and coordinators of organizations associated to the partners, professional educators, healthcare technicians, home assistants, responsible for the communication, occupational therapists, psychologists, physiotherapists, experts from the planning department). In terms of direct impact, the opportunity to participate to one or more visits facilitated a training “on the field” and contributed to the widening of their vision on the utility and the functioning of integrated services, which also imply the rethinking of the necessary competences. Besides, the direct contact with different cultures of approaching care and cure gave them the elements of a necessary intercultural approach.As it emerged from the Observation Form of the Best Practices, filled in by each partner after each visit, TRAINING and CONTINUOUS REQUALIFICATION of the professionals from the different home assistance services, are essential in order to educate them to the vision of the integration of interventions/services meant to improve the quality of life of the assisted persons and to favor the social inclusion process of the disadvantaged persons.Through the continuous dissemination activity, around 36.000 persons were reached, a public made mainly of experts from the third sector at the national and European level, local/national/European stakeholders, professionals from the healthcare and education sector, public institutions.The partnership had started from an initial situation of differentiation both due to the type of organization and to the integration level of the existing services. According to the options expressed by the partners during the final Focus Group, the model of the “integrated desks/CARE HUBS” remains the ideal one needed for a real innovation of the assistance services (domiciliary and non), even if differentiated according to the culture and to the existing legislation of each country.The collection of the 26 best practices in a e-book (available in EPUB and PDF format) allowed a deeper reflection on the models and initiatives observed and the collection of the organizations and the territories involved.The partnership followed the double meaning of the word “DARE”: “to donate”, in Italian, and therefore aim at the quality of life of the persons for whom, as professionals, we are responsible, and “to dare”, in English, as a really sustainable welfare allover Europe, homogenous in terms of quality and quantity, cannot be possible without OVERCOMING the traditional division of the assistance and care services based on “target groups”.Being convinced that that innovation is possible event with small (but strategic) steps, the idea of foreseeing, on more territories, the creation of Integrated Desks for care and assistance (not only domiciliary one) remains an objective to be carried on. The “DARE” project helped the partners also in facing the real dimensions of the needed changes in order to reach, even partly, this objective.