1More than 20 representatives of residential institutions involved in the project took part in a workshop on Development of individual plans, which was held in Belgrade on May 15, 2014.

Dr. Monika Gabanyi, Project Team Leader, opened the workshop and said that the workshop was organized with the aim to provide support to residential institutions in developing individual plans in the process of transformation.

Milutin Cvetkovic, IT Expert, presented a software solution that has been developed by the project and will be available to residential institutions in order to provide data collection, data entry and storage, as well as to search and edit personal information. One purpose of the software is to follow the Ris transformation and development plan in a unified manner. The software solution is easy to use and application performance can be independent from the Internet. Implementation of the program is planned for the end of May.

Mirko Jankelić, Director of the RI „Čurug“ from Čurug, presented the planning process of de-institutionalization through the example of their own institution. Mr. Jankelić defined deinstitutionalization as a process of reform or change from institutions to local or alternative services, which is being implemented under the assumption that persons on institutional care can be provided needed services and support for independent life outside the institution, ie . in the community.

His vision of the RI transformation Mr. Jankelic has determined through drafted short-term and long-term institution plans, pointing out that the formal process of deinstitutionalization in the institution started with the cooperation with the Project „Open Arms“.

Afterwards, Prof. Dr. Miroslav Brkic, Project Expert on Social Inclusion and Quality Assurance, invited the participants to draft a five-years plan and present their vision of the transformation of their own institution.

Dragana Stankovic, Project Community Services Training Assistant, stressed the importance of individual planning as an integral part of the transformation plan and interactivly identified potential risks and estimation of probability of any risk basis the data and information, and ways to minimize it.

Prof. dr. Vito Flaker, Project Community Services Training Expert, presented the issues related to the transfer of users from institutions to the community and indicated five principles of „normalization“ – the evaluation of social roles, which are related to good relationships, greater choice, developing participation, personal development and socializing.

Participants who were awarded grants for project proposals presented the planned project activities and later on the topics for educational training centers which they will be in charge during the upcoming training period under the project implementation were shared. The workshop ended with a discussion on next steps and future activities.