Kašna - Sheltered Workshop

Country

Czech Republic

Description

Kašna is a sheltered workshop for people who are physically and mentally handicapped. The activity is being operated by non-professionals in the area of mental health, i.e. a person efficient in the area of mental health care, not an organisation. In this sheltered workshop candles and brushes are being produced.

Aims

Emphasis is place on the fact that the employees of workshop have work, they have their everyday duty. Work is not about performance, but about the feeling that everyone is needful also for the benefit of others. Created products are sold at markets and other occasions. Clients know that their work goes beyond play or therapeutics group sessions.

Areas

Employment

Effectiveness

There are permanent customers for products made in the workshop; some of them are big and famous firms (for example Czech Airlines Prague, Brewery - Velke Popovice, Staropramen, Nymburk, Pardubice, etc.).

Qualitative indicator: integration of people with different types of health handicap. Most important is the fact that they know there is a need for their work, and so they have possibility of self-realization.

Sustainability

Financial resources are various, gains from the selling of products made in workshop to firms, at markets, etc. There is also support from grants and foundations.

Innovation

The work is organized with focus on the integration of people with mental illness into society and their integration with other workers with different handicaps. Reality shows that all clients feel better when they see that others are also confronted with problems and difficulties.

Added Value

The clients are not socially excluded; most of them obtain full or partly disability pension. Due to their handicap, sometimes it is difficult for them to ask for other social benefits. The amount, which they obtain in the workshop as salary is not substantial, but it can help to become more economically independent.

Transferability

The procedure of a manual workshop is easy and easily applicable to different institutions of this kind. The technological process of this workshop is also not very difficult.

Mainstreaming Potential

The basic idea of this project is to help to people with a handicap. In Prague there are more similar projects of this kind, but this project gathers people with different handicaps. The leaders of this project try not only to create good working conditions, but also keep good relationships among employees. The project is not based on the question of economic benefit, but the benefit of people with a handicap.

Costs of the Project

Expenses not specified.

Financial resources are various: gains from selling of products made in the workshop to firms, at markets, etc. There is also support from grants and foundations.

People involved in the Project (number of people and profession)

The project leaders, Mr. and Mrs. Novak, working therapists. There is also cooperation with ex-working therapists of employees, with their working counselors, in some cases with special doctors.

Contact Person for the Project

Lenka Nováková
lenka.novakova@cmail.cz
www.kartacnictvi.com
www.svickarstvi.com