COmpetence Oriented COUnselling (COOCOU)
COOCU was a KA2 Strategic Partnership co-funded by the Erasmus+ of the European Union. At the project’s core is the perception that people with cognitive impairments still face barriers regarding their participation in educational programs and, consequently, in the labor market. COOCOU therefore aimed at addressing the need for a tool that helps cognitively impaired persons to find out about their competences, boost their self-confidence, and support their empowerment in order to help promoting their social and economic inclusion. In order to achieve this, COOCOU built on the ProfilPASS, a tool for competence assessment that helps revealing and documenting hidden competences that people have learned and may not be aware of, which was adapted to the needs of cognitively impaired persons through the creation of the Barrier-free ProfilPASS. Additionally, perceiving the need for counselling especially when working with a self-evaluation tool, COOCOU sought to support and train counsellors working with cognitively impaired persons. Through the development of a manual providing guidelines on the Barrier-free ProfilPASS and the toolkit itself, COOCOU trained a total of 30 councilors and benefited 60 people overall with the competence assessment.
COOCOU was led by the German organization Institution for Science and Practice of Continuing Education in Germany (DIE) in cooperation with SwIdeas (Sweden), Career Development and Integration (DEFOIN - Spain), Dafni Kentro Epaggelmatikis Katartisis (DAFNI KEK - Greece), Andragoski zavod Ljudska univerza Velenje (Slovenia), Die Berater Unternehmensberatungs Gesellschaft MBH (Die Berater – Austria).
