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ICFProViP

NCBI is a partner in a new EU funded project called ICFProViP. This project is funded under the EU Life long Learning, Partnerships Programme. It is one of only eight projects that received EU funding under this programme from the National Agency, Leargas.

Partners in this project include the following organisations:

  • NRCB Bulgaria
  • IBOS, Denmark
  • Institute Monteclair, France
  • BFW Duren, Germany
  • NCBI, Ireland
  • Royal Visio, Netherlands
  • LDV, Romania

About ICF

The ICF is an international classification of health and health-related domains approved and published by WHO in 2001.It has been has been officially endorsed as the standard to describe and measure health and disability by 191 countries. It presents a holistic framework for measuring different information on functioning. Within this system disability is not viewed in contrast to health but rather as a continuum of health and promotes a focus on ability instead of disability. The ICF highlights the interaction between the individual and the environment. It stresses the need to integrate individual functioning with the physical and social environment in order to capture the complete lived experience of disability. This is a radical shift in thinking and understanding of disability for international and many national bodies

The use of the ICF model in assessment and service delivery, allows for a common language to be used across the professions in relation to the needs of service users which should increase the ability of professionals to provide a focused standardised response while acknowledging an addressing the service users perspective and enhancing their participation in the decision making process. It allows for the implementation of a standard of defining and understanding disability which can be easily compared and used for the collation of statistics re the target group and outcomes therefore providing a standardised scientific evidence base for our work.

Those involved in promoting ICF intend for it to become the standard by which people define and understand disability, and as such provide a standard and comparable means of collecting disability statistics. Acceptance of the ICF requires a change in the way people think about disability.

The project aims include the following:-

  • To research the use of ICF with the population of people with vision impairment by the partners in the project who come from Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Romania.
  • To explore the potential of introducing ICF to the organisations where it is not used.
  • Visio the Dutch partner will present their two day ICF course for professional staff working with people with vision impairment to the project partners. Project partners will then use this experience to research, develop, deliver, and evaluate a customised country specific course to meet partner needs.
  • The partners will share information and expertise about the area of rehabilitation service delivery in each of their countries.
  • The project will also explore possibilities of introducing methods of including ICF in employment support services.

At this stage NCBI has conducted the relevant research & exchange of information and expertise re the ICF training course delivered by VISIO and we are now preparing an introductory training course for use at NCBI.

For further information please see http://www.enviter.eu/index.php?idcat=42