Health Education for Young People with Disabilities (HEDY) was a two-year project designed to improve the personal development and health education that young people with disabilities, particularly autistic people, receive. Running from October 2020 to November 2022, this project was funded by the Erasmus + Programme of the European Union.
Teachers in public schools report receiving inadequate training and rate their efficacy in working with young people on the autism spectrum as low. In line with the recommendations of the European Council (i.e., “Investing in basic skills has become more relevant than ever”), the HEDY project gave special attention to raising the level of personal, social and learning competences of youth with disabilities to improve their health-conscious, future-oriented life management.
The project strengthened the knowledge and skills of teachers providing health education to young people with disabilities. To achieve this, a complex training programme of four e-learning modules was developed and made available for free in five European languages including English, French, Romanian, Icelandic and Greek. Young people with disabilities taught by trained teachers thus developed key personal self-care competencies. Moreover, youth with disabilities contributed to the co-creation of the e-learning modules and a final guideline document on youth participation for teachers.
With the proposed activities, the project aimed to reduce disparities in acquiring key competencies and tackle discrimination, minimising the gap between autistic youth and neurotypical youth.
The project brought together the expertise of five project partners and eight associated partner schools. The project coordinator, Romanian Angel Appeal Foundation – RAA (Romania), worked together with the State Diagnostic and Counselling Centre –SDCC (Iceland), IASIS (Greece), the Inclusive Education School Center Nr. 2 – CSEI (Romania), and Autism-Europe (Belgium).
About the Erasmus+ Programme
Erasmus+ is the EU’s programme to support education, training, youth and sport in Europe. Its budget of €14.7 billion will provide opportunities for over 4 million Europeans to study, train, gain experience, and volunteer abroad.