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Minutes of the meeting held on 27th September 2005

1. Introduction
The meeting opened at 8:30 am, as scheduled, and Ms. Cantoni welcomed all of the people present.
The agenda included the following items for discussion:

• Time schedule for the “big meetings”: study visits, working groups…
• WP action 4: Thematic working groups
• WP action 2 and 5: Observatory and Mainstreaming and dissemination
• WP action 7: appointment of the Steering and Evaluation Committee
• WP action 8: Transnational technical secretary

2. “Big meeting” time schedule
As a result of the previous session, it was decided to organize 3 “big meetings”. Tentative dates were defined for each meeting:

• French Guyana: February/March, 2006 (tentative date: 13th – 19th March)
• Slovakia: October, 2006 (tentative date: 16th – 22nd October)
• Italy: March, 2007 (tentative date: 19th – 25th March)

With reference to the Italian DP proposal of the day before, the Slovak DP agreed to the possibility to host a part of the Italian delegation to help them understand the Slovak reality and needs. This possibility will be discussed in the future.

The partners then proceeded to discuss suggestions about the organization of the meetings. They agreed on following points:

• appointment of a person who will take part in all meetings to ensure continuity.
• the number of delegates should be reported in advance.
• the hosting country will be responsible for the organization of the meeting it will host.
• the agenda for each meeting will have to be sent to the partners 2 month before the starting date of the meeting.
•  the guest country will be free to define the composition of its own delegation according to the program reported by the hosting country. It will then send a proposal to the hosting country at least a month in advance.
• the French Guyana DP will send the other partners a provisional agenda for the first meeting by October, 2005. The final version of the agenda will be sent by December, 2005.

3. WP action 4: Thematic working groups
Ms. Tordovà presented Slovak DP’s suggestions concerning thematic working groups.
She presented 2 working groups for the Slovak TCA: one on new approach models for the employment of homeless clients – conducted by Slovakia and French Guyana – and one on care service development focusing on women and child care – organized by Italy and French Guyana.
The project leader of the working group will be the Slovak DP. Each group will have a coordinator, who will be responsible for the group’s activities. The first group coordinator will be from the Slovak DP and the second one from the Italian DP. Each group will be made up of at least 2 participants from each DP. Both working group will take part in each of the 3 big meetings, when all members of TCA will gather. 
As for responsibilities, the project leader of the working groups (Slovak DP) will define the agenda and work program for the meeting and record and report its outcome to the other partners. The group coordinator (Slovak DP, Italian DP) will be responsible for preparing the working group agenda for each meeting, organizing facilitation and moderation for the working process and collecting information material prior to the meeting, as well as preparing a report on the outcome of the meeting and sending it to the project leader.
Ms. Tordovà added some practical considerations, explaining that the agenda of the Slovak group meeting will be distributed by the Slovak coordinator a month before the meeting. The same will apply to the Italian group meeting. Each working group coordinator can ask participants to send relevant information 2 months before deadline.
As far as the structure of the working groups is concerned, Ms. Tordovà provided the following directions:

• Welcome of participants, introduction to the main topic/questions of the meeting
• Single DPs’ presentations about the problem – including local background and country specific characteristics
• Presentation of the experts, if any
• Discussion about the problems
• Summary – defining the outcome
• Report of the outcome of the meeting

3. WP action 2: Observatory
Ms. Borel of French Guyana DP made a presentation of WP action 2: Observatory.
The Observatory’s goal is to collect and exchange information and experiences concerning local welfare systems and exclusion. A section of the observatory will be dedicated to the processing and dissemination of collected data, which will be presented in a semi-annual newsletter and on the Internet.
The observatory will be run by all transnational partners and will work closely with the working groups. It will be published on each transnational partner’s website. The on-line observatory could be hosted by the TCA website.
Ms. Borel proposed to set up a database containing similar information collected in the partner countries, compile and analyze the data collected and report them in a newsletter to be released each semester. Cooperation with Slovakia will also be needed in order to publish the information on-line.

Possible areas in which information from the different partners could be collected and compared were proposed and discussed, including:

• national laws
• public policies
• relationship between public and private sectors
• services that are already available and services that are still needed
• needs of each region (social, educational and training level)
• possible solutions: sharing of best practices
• identifying the best training approach

All partners agreed on the creation of a 2-level database for gathering both local and national data on two targets: homeless people and social and educational services.

4. WP action 5: Mainstreaming and dissemination  
Ms. Cantoni presented the subject of “Mainstreaming and dissemination” on behalf of the Italian DP.
The overall aim of WP action 5 is to exchange and disseminate experiences and best practices at different levels; involve national and European decision makers and politicians and create a common transnational project identification design (the Italian DP will be responsible for the creation of a common logo).
The subjects who should be involved are all TCA project partners and, in general, all those participating in the Equal project (informed through Equal’s common website); organizations and people working in the same field; decision makers and people responsible for social welfare systems.
The mainstreaming and dissemination work is specifically aimed at making the results and outcomes of our activities available to all those organizations which will work in the same area in the future and at establishing contacts and collaborations with new countries in order to develop partnerships in other fields as well.
The tools and strategies used include the development of a common database of contacts (mailing list) containing those involved in all of the partners’ national and transnational partnerships; using the project’s communication tools (website, common conferences, newsletter, etc.) for communication and promotional purposes; organizing an international seminar in each of the partner countries; releasing short publications such as brochures, leaflets, CD-rom etc. and organizing press conferences and contacting specialized magazines.
As far as the national seminar are concerned, each DP will be responsible for the organization of the events which will take place in its country and the related information material (publications, leaflets, etc.). A common leaflet for the conference – containing the same general information on the TCA that are available on the website – will be created jointly by the Italian and Slovak DPs.
From an organizational point of view, the mainstreaming and dissemination activities will be carried out throughout the duration of the project. An information and publicity plan for the project will also be drawn up. The communication and information tools and publications will be shared by all partners, who will disseminate them at all levels in their countries and abroad.

5. WP action 7: Appointment of the Steering and Evaluation Committee
All partners agreed to postpone the appointment of the first meeting of the Steering and Evaluation Committee to the next meeting.

6. WP action 8: Transnational technical secretary
Ms. Borel gave a brief overview of the role of the transnational technical secretary. The tasks of the transnational technical secretariat – working closely with the Steering and Evaluation Committee, the partners and their national secretariats - will be to ensure communication among the partners and to support the organization of transnational activities and events. Another relevant task of the secretariat will be TCA monitoring.
The French Guyana DP, as transnational secretariat, will be responsible for writing the minutes and forwarding them to all DPs and to Slovakia for posting on the common website; reminding the various deadlines (a time schedule listing the tasks of each DP will be sent by French Guyana in October, 2005); moderating the meeting of the Steering and Evaluation Committee; giving notice of any news or changes concerning transnational cooperation to all DPs.

7. WP action 6: Evaluation
At the instance of Ms. Habran-Mery, the subject of evaluation was taken into consideration.
The goal of the evaluation process is to make a participative internal and external assessment of each transnational activity. The partners agreed that this assessment will be based on both quantitative and qualitative criteria, which still need to be discussed and approved by the Steering and Evaluation Committee.
External and internal evaluation will be carried out collectively by a transnational evaluator for each DP (joint evaluation). The evaluation process will be based on the proposed objectives and will assess the partners’ success in meeting them.
Ms. Habran-Mery pointed out that it was too soon to set up evaluation activities, since assessment methods can only be identified once the actual actions/approaches have been defined. She added that it was essential to define accurate evaluation objectives, including success rates, in order to be able to precisely identify any weaknesses and improvement possibilities. It was decided that the big meeting in French Guyana could serve as an occasion to set out such methods. The French Guyana DP also mentioned the possibility and need to hire an external evaluator.
The provisional means for evaluation mentioned included meetings, exchange of information and the set-up of activities such as the observatory, the working groups and the common website.

8. Conclusion
At the end of the discussion, the partners acknowledged that progress had been made. The meeting was closed by Ms. Cantoni at 12:00 am.