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European Support Network for Disabled Persons and their Families

All partners knew their disabled members, carers or parents, were very reluctant to travel. Many reasons, real and imaginary, delayed a decision to actually commit to a journey. To help overcome this problem Disnet set out to compile a Good Practice Guide (GPG) for organising Transnational Meetings (TNM) for future projects. The intention was to both motivate the potential traveller and to encourage hosts to plan ahead to cover the different needs of disabled guests. BOTH aspects are required for maximum social inclusion. The TNMs themselves were used as a source of data to produce the GPG. Additional data came from activities which were added to improve the motivation needed to sustain the group interaction over the two years. These included, informal meetings, sport, dancing, cultural events and mixed ability groups.The UK group established an online collaboration website which was used to record participants experiences and to create a sense of ‘community’.The GPG was produced by the UK group; such was the volume of observations and information produced that it was a challenge to complete in the time available. From observing the informal support measures the French group produced a psycho-sociological analysis of problems facing a person with disabilities trying to reach autonomy and become a more active European citizen. Members of the UK learner group produced a unified account covering the combined ‘Reflections’ of participants in TNMs. Other members of the group produced a series of 'Short Stories' of individual inspirational moments from the TNMs.Reading all these documents together gives a very complete feeling of both obstacles and opportunities.They all talk about, or illustrate, the need to give potential travelers the 'confidence' to travel. The feeling of community was central to that by providing mutual inspiration and joy.The number of disabled travelers increased over the time of the project with the last TNM be

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