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On May 1, the Helpdesk project has officially started. The Helpdesk is a 2-years project funded by The European Union which aims to finance the building blocks for a Social Services Helpdesk. The proposed Helpdesk will have two main priorities:
- to support social services in better accessing and using EU funds;
- to help Managing Authorities use EU funds (ESF+, ERDF and ReactEU in particular) to finance quality interventions in the field of social services.
Coordinated by EASPD, the 16 organisations making up the project consortium have begun to meet during some preliminary meetings to reflect on their respective responsibilities and make progress on the initial steps of the Helpdesk. Getting off on the right foot is indeed extremely important for a project that could have a crucial impact on the social services sector.
It is widely acknowledged that, nowadays, social services are facing important difficulties, such as chronic underfunding, staff shortages and challenges in transitioning to community-based and person-centred forms of services. The COVID-19 pandemic only heightened these problems making it harder and more expensive to meet the increased needs in delivering social services. Receiving adequate funds and making sure that these are easily accessible and used to fund quality interventions in the field is critical to overcome these obstacles. The Helpdesk project will make sure to reach these objectives and guarantee that organisations representing social services will have a better access to relevant EU funds (ESF+, ERDF, React-EU and other relevant EU funds) and a reinforced dialogue and cooperation with Managing Authorities and the European Commission.
Considering that the organisations being part of the consortium represent a large variety of social services and have members located in every EU Member State and beyond, the project will enjoy an extremely strong dissemination capacity across the whole European Union. This will ensure that social services and Managing Authorities in all EU Member States will be able to benefit from the newly set up Helpdesk.
On June 28 and 29, the project consortium will meet in Brussels for the project kick-off meeting. Partner organisations will have the opportunity to discuss about the implementation plans of the different project’s activities and to lay the foundations for the next steps.
Stay tuned and follow us for the next updates!
