Mental disorders are one of the greatest public health challenges in terms of prevalence, burden of disease and disability and they cause major burden to economies, demanding policy action. More than one in six people across EU countries had a mental… Read more health issue in 2016, equivalent to about 84 million people. Moreover, in 2016, 165,000 deaths were attributed to mental and behavioural disorders, including self-harm, in EU.The burden of mental illness in the European WHO region is estimated to account for 14.4% of years lived with disability (YLDs) and 5.8% of disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs), placing thus mental illness as the second biggest contributor to YLDs after musculoskeletal disorders and as fourth in terms of DALYs in the WHO European region. Total costs pertaining to ill mental health have been gauged at more than 4% of GDP- or over 600 billion- across EU in 2015. Many European countries have in place policies and programmes to address mental illness at different ages. Nevertheless, much more can be done to manage and promote mental health. Delivery of MH care services takes various forms across EU. Some countries still rely on big psychiatric hospitals, while others are delivering the care for MH mostly in community settings.This need for prioritizing mental health becomes more imperative, in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Converging evidence substantiate emerging mental health needs and difficulties faced by the mental health care systems to tackle them. Building upon 15+ years of EU efforts including the Joint Action for Mental Health and Well-being the European Framework for Action and the EU Compass, the Members of the SGPP have selected two best practices (i) the Mental health reform in Belgium and (ii) Suicide prevention form Austria to be implemented during the new Joint Action on mental health, with an aim to extend the benefits of these best practices to participating countries.

Our project has been designed to support the European Union by addressing two priorities. The first priority is “Addressing digital transformation through the development of digital readiness, resilience and capacity”. All of the partner institutions are members of the European Network for… Read more Regional Labour Market Monitoring (ENRLMM) and as a network, we have lobbied for many years for more nuanced use of labour market intelligence (LMI) within regions and within educational institutions in the current digitalized context. Our Network has over 400 members from all countries of the European Union and is financially self-sustaining. It is the expert European network on the use of Labour Market Intelligence in regional and local geographies and it will fully support this project. Our lead partner, the West University of Timisoara is a very active member of the Network and the host of ENRLMM Big Data Knowledge Hub. This is a collaborative platform for mutual exchange and learning where all the members of the EN RLMM can look for guidance when aiming to use big data in their labour market. LMI is critical for understanding the new challenges on the labour market and to help HEI to increase the capacity and readiness to manage an effective shift towards digital education. Additionally, it helps to develop the appropriate digital skills and competencies through better matching of education supply to demand and for forecasting and fore-sighting skills needs. Within this priority we will seek to support digital transformation through the development of digital readiness, resilience and capacity in three areas that the Network has identified are a priority for Universities and Higher Education institutions: a. Matching education/skills supply to local and regional labour market demand (covering topics such as ecosystems, partnerships, forecasting, real-time Labour Market Intelligence); b. Fitting curriculum content to a rapidly evolving world of work (employer-input, fore-sighting etc.) and the provision of new types of course (higher VET, 2-year degrees, etc.); c. Evidencing impact and outcomes for policymakers (such as employability, graduate tracking, internships and placement provision). Up-to-date labour market intelligence is also critical to the HEI Priority “Stimulating innovative learning and teaching practices”. This is our second priority and within the project, we will explore how Universities can develop student-centred curricula and ensure that their offer tackles the skills needs of the current and predicted European workforce and what lessons around this can be disseminated across the sector.

The COVID-19 crisis has heavily impacted education and training and has accelerated digital transformation providing a glimpse into the Future of Work. Moreover, the impact of COVID- has forced the majority of companies and organisations, of all sizes and across… Read more all industries, to accelerate -or rapidly implement processes for their digital transformation. The world has turned digital overnight and workers need to adapt rapidly to a new reality, which included a need to reduce all face-to-face exchanges and keep physical contact to a minimum, and large-scale adoption of remote ways of communicating. The ACSOL project (Acquiring crisis-proof skills through online learning) addresses two service sectors which have been very hardly hit: 1) Social care and 2) Arts, entertainment and culture. Analysis of labour market intelligence indicates low-skilled workers in these sectors tend to lack skills to easily adopt the digital transformation of their jobs, and that that they often lack the necessary skills to access the more complex online training formats to equip them with these skills. ACSOL offers these low-skilled workers the opportunity to train themselves in essential digital skills in order for them to gain access to further digital training and to be better prepared in their job. The ultimate aim of the ACSOL project is to expand adult digital skills training provision through online learning which would have significant advantages for workers in social care as well as entertainment, arts and culture. In particular, online learning on digital skills could help reach a much bigger number of learners on these sources in the context of the COVID‑19 crisis but it is crucial for our transnational project to make online learning more inclusive and more effectively convey the relevant meaning in the target group, with a training adapted to the profile of the low-skilled workers and key digital skills for challenges and opportunities on jobs related to digital transformation on both sectors. We propose to design and develop an eLearning toolkit that will boost the digital literacy skills and specific skills of current low-skilled workers, through continuing VET, so that they are able to both face the crisis provoked by COVID-19 and to increase their opportunities to improve their job and working conditions. To do so, we will first carry out a thorough labour market statistical analysis of online vacancies in the occupations on social care and arts, entertainment and culture activities to identify the impact of COVID-19 crisis on jobs and the evolution of digital skills demanded by labour market, which will be completed with a survey to micro companies, workers and users about the degree of digital transformation and will help gather ideas for business transformation and digital skills for workers and occupations on these sectors. Then, the identification of opportunities, needs and risks of digital transformation as well as key digital competences and proposals for involving our target groups will be presented and discussed in sectoral triple helix working groups established in each region, and integrated by business, vocational training providers and policy makers. The goal will be to develop a regional proposal at sectoral level with recommendations on topics such as the hybridization of jobs and embracing digital skills with recommendations for the adoption of eLearningstrategies that will be presented to the Annual European Network on Regional Labour Market Monitoring Conference – to achieve a common European vision. Therefore, a transnational perspective for a research and implementation project is proposed. The transnational nature of the project ensures learning from different settings and supports the exchange of good practices, success factors and lessons learned. Finally, we will create new eLearning materials that will embrace the topics that workers with low qualifications and employed in micro companies need to acquire for both confronting the current crisis and more generally to adapt to a changing world of work. The online learning toolkit will include a wide range of solutions such as online courses, educational resources, video content, mobile learning, etc., both formal and non-formal. The ACSOL products will be available online in 5 different European languages and will be tested with workers for their feedback in each region to get conclusions and improvements for the tool which will be incorporated. The ACSOL intellectual outputs and activities will have a series of long-lasting impacts and there will be especially significant impact on the target users of the Toolkit. The low-skilled European workforce of the social care sector and the culture sector, will be benefitting from our toolkit because it will help them acquire the digital skills they need both to access online, distance or blended training, and to maintain or transform their jobs in these sectors.

Context Europe is facing a demographic crisis, with a shrinking workforce coupled with increased demands for social services. The labour force in Europe is projected to decrease by an average of two million people every year until 2030. This represents a… Read more loss of 1% of its current size each year for the next 10 years. Yet, in many countries, most workers still retire (relatively) early. They often do so not because they want to, but because they feel compelled to, or that they do not have other options. Solutions need to be found to make work more sustainable, and to extend working lives in order to avoid old-age poverty and to reduce state expenditure on pensions and welfare. (Changing places: Mid-career review and internal mobility, Eurofound Report, 2017) Recent OECD research has highlighted that there are many millions of adults in Europe with low levels of functional literacy and/or numeracy skills and that the majority of these are in employment (OECD Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC) 2019). This has negative implications for their employment potential and longer term career prospects. The concept of the Mid Life Skills Review is gradually gaining favour in many countries and the role of social partners in both lobbying for and delivering elements of this can be critical to its success (Eurofound 2017). The Learning and Work Institute and the TUC can take some of the credit for their campaign for everyone to have this mid-life entitlement at 50. Indeed, the recent (John Cridland) report on pensions in the UK included a recommendation to have a mid-life 'MOT' at 50 for, amongst other things, skills. This is the perfect time for this project, which can make a real and lasting impact. Our recent ERASMUS+ Project developed the Value My Skills tool that takes users/learners through steps with clear instructions to identify and rate their skills, keep reflection notes, design an action plan and record their progress. The tool is best used in partnership with a learning coach - so that the learner can discuss their findings in a safe and supportive environment. The tool is freely available in several European languages. Aim We aim to add value to the already much used Value My Skills tool that was developed by the Mid Life Skills Review ERASMUS+ Project which successfully launched in 2019 and is hosted by the TUC. The potential benefits of our additional work in this field emerged from the evaluation of the Mid Life Skills Review ERASMUS+ project. We will extend the tool to new countries and boost functionality. Innovations Our project will develop a suite of innovative new materials to support the delivery of the Mid Life Skills Reviews. These include new Quick Win online modules that will enable learners to see positive impacts from returning to learning - vital given our target audience is hard-to-reach low skilled adults in the workplace. We will also build new online materials to help boost the support for the critical role of the skills coaches. To help with mainstreaming and wider adoption we will design new National Delivery Models, bespoke for each partner country. In addition, we will develop - an Occupation Profile Tool - that will enable the users/learners to see how their skills match with the skills needed for different occupations. This will be done by linking to the EU ESCO skills classification system. The user/learner will also able to see where a skills boost (via the Quick Wins for example) could lead to routes into other occupations. As the Value My Skills Tool uses workplace coaches to work through the Tool with the learners - the coaches from across the partnership will be encouraged to become ‘mid-life skills champions’, with the support of a virtual e-network. This network will support its members and share ideas and experience. Finally, in keeping with the European priority for promoting the recognition of skills and qualifications, we will accredit the learning through the use of new online Digital Badges and will enable links to be made into the Europass CV Programme. Badging of this kind is increasingly valued and is an innovation which the lead partner has considerable existing expertise. Impacts We will gain sustainable impacts by: delivering a series of events in each partner country to highlight the new materials and support available; using social media to disseminate the positive outcomes from the mid-life skills reviews e.g. progression, promotion, career change etc; and ultimately through boosting the skills of hard-to-reach older workers within the labour market, benefiting themselves, their families, their employers and European labour markets. The partners have been selected as all have existing close working relationships with employers, policymakers and trade unions and all have significant experience in working in the adult education and skills sector and together we have the expertise to carry out all of the activities required within the project.

PILLARS offers a three-pillars framework that includes: (1) A comprehensive and empirically solid account of the combined effect of (i) past waves of automation technologies, (ii) recent trends of international fragmentation of production in Global Value Chains (GVCs) and (iii) industrial transformation… Read more of European regions on EU labour markets, in terms of employment reconfiguration, skill mismatch and migration. (2) A comprehensive set of forecasting scenarios based on the impact assessment in (1) and projection of (i) industries’ future exposure to emerging automation technologies; (ii) EU regional industrial transformation and (de)specialisation; and (iii) functional reallocation of workers along GVC and migration flows; and (iv) potential skill mismatch resulting from projections of skill demand and supply. (3) A systematic evaluation of current labour market policies, based on smart specialisation, and training policies that allows identifying areas of success and directions to be mitigated. This will lead to proposing a coherent and cohesive policy roadmap that includes a battery of action in different policy areas (innovation, trade, education and training) to achieve Pathways to Inclusive Labour Markets. PILLARS’ ambition to contribute to assess current labour market policies and co-design a new generation of policies for the future of work will be fulfilled by a consortium of top scholars, including partners from Latin America and China; an enthusiastic, international, multidisciplinary stakeholder support to the potential of PILLARS; and a top notch academic advisory board.

The mission of RESPOND is 1) to identify critical resilience factors and specific vulnerable groups at risk of immediate and long-term adverse mental health impact of the COVID-19 pandemic; 2) To improve the resilience, wellbeing and mental health of frontline health and… Read more care workers and other vulnerable groups by implementing scalable World Health Organization (WHO) programmes, and 3) to steer future policy decisions by understanding and disentangling the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and different public health containment and subsequently relaxation strategies on mental health and wellbeing in vulnerable groups across Europe’s different health systems. RESPOND is centred around core questions regarding the short and long-term impacts of the pandemic on mental health and health inequalities on vulnerable groups within the general population, including frontline workers. In the first immediate delivery phase, an impressive set of existing longitudinal datasets are examined for resilience factors and risk factors. Furthermore, the responsiveness of health systems and identification of best practice responses that protect resilience, mental health and wellbeing are assessed in eight EU countries. The long-terms effects are determined of the pandemic and the control measures on demand for (mental) health services in health registers in Sweden, Lombardy and Barcelona and the scalable WHO SH+/PM+ stepped care programmes adapted for COVID-19 will be implemented and evaluated both in frontline workers and vulnerable groups. RESPOND provides policy recommendations within 3 months on vulnerability factors for developing poor mental health resulting from current containment and mitigation measures. Further lessons learnt and evidence-based policy recommendations will be made available during the project’s lifetime through Policy Briefs in month 6, 12, 18, 24 and 36 for immediate consideration and use by all EU member states.

AI4ESCO aims at realising the objective (a) to support Member States, EURES members and partners to establish high-quality mapping-tables allowing for matching job vacancies and CVs in the European Job Mobility Portal. Specifically, we plan to achieve the following goals:… Read more (i) derive a machine-readable structure of the lexicon used within the Italian National Occupation Taxonomy (CP2011); (ii) connect ESCO to Italian National Taxonomy by means of word-embedding similarities; (iii) exploit on domain-experts to review and validate the results. It is also interesting to highlight that use of AI algorithms is well suited for natural language processing and reasoning as they allow deriving similarities between terms from a lexicon point of view. These similarities, in turn, can be used as a reference-table to match two distinct terms of taxonomies, making a bridge between taxonomies in a bottom up approach. The UNIMIB-CRISP team is composed by researchers and staff members that fits the Core competences of multidisciplinary approach to LMI. AI4ESCO will make a bridge between Italian Official Occupation Taxonomy towards ESCO (Occupation pillar) suggesting the correspondence between National occupation to ESCO (and vice-versa) in the job vacancy classification. We plan to evaluate the ability of AI4ESCO to provide the most relevant connection towards ESCO. The last impact is to discover lexicon similarities between ESCO occupations. The sustainability of AI4ESCO that will allow the mapping table to be updated over time will be guaranteed by: specific and reproducible report describing in detail the steps made to realise the AI system which could work as a manual for a future re-implementation of the process for other national taxonomies; code to reproduce and re-iterate the procedure that maps the Italian Occupation taxonomies on ESCO; use of Multi-criteria-decision-making model to provide evidences of the judgments and criteria used by labour market experts.

Objectives - reducing discrimination affecting Roma people, with a particular focus on access to housing, by a better understanding of the issues and by providing Roma with tools and knowledge to defende their own rights - supporting Roma integration into society through empowerment,… Read more the promotion and support of their active participation and capacity building and development of Roma and pro-Roma civil society Activities - Transnational research on Roma housing - Mutual learning on Roma housing and empowerment - Empowerment of Roma people for participation and defense of rights - Awareness raising Beneficiaries - Roma people - professionals of public and private organizations working in the domain of housing, other related services and civil rights; social workers; volunteers; nonprofit organizations working with Roma; university students; local and EU public institutions; journalists and opinion makers; citizens Expected results For Roma - acquiring information about the policies addressed to them and their rights, focusing on housing - improving their relationship with public and private services - gaining awareness of their potential as active citizens - empowerment and ability to impact on their community - understanding the importance of associating and working together For other beneficiaries - tools and knowledge to support Roma integration and the enforcement of their rights - overcoming prejudices and stereotypes - improving the quality of answers to Roma needs - strengthening synergies and collaboration between public sector, private services and universities Deliverables - 10 focus groups - 125 interviews - transnational research on housing - booklet with best practices and recommendations on housing and empowerment - 5 videos