Empowerment: the emancipation of service users
Keywords: User group networking, parents organisations collaboration, impact on policy and services, local and international experience.

Background
Empowerment refers to the enhancement of political, social or economic power of individuals or groups. Empowerment can also stand for the development of confidence in the capacities of the person or group in question. In relation to marginalised people, empowerment supports the relevant persons, respectively groups to increase the control on their life and to increase social inclusion. Empowerment interventions aim to overcome the obstacles of structural inequality, which have previously put them into a disadvantaged position. In other words: empowerment is a process of helping people to assert control over the factors, which affect their lives and it enables people to take responsibility for themselves and others.

There exist different forms and levels of empowerment, (service) user participation and self organisation within the different countries of Europe. However, there is only poor exchange and communication on European or transnational level.

Aims
The main aim of the seminar is to improve the exchange of knowledge, to present and compare existing models of good practice on a European level and to support the efforts to establish European empowerment groups. As the level of user involvement is very different in European countries, the exchange of knowledge and existing models of good practices is the starting point to identify common goals and strategies on European level. Additional, one concrete skill building training on cocaine use and self regulation will be organised on the 15th of November.

Profile of the participants
Representatives of user organisations, interest and advocacy groups, parent organisations, service providers, sex work projects and migrant organisations will analyse their role in this process and contribute actively to the program. Participants should be actively involved in the area of empowerment, user involvement, self organisation or advocacy and should be able to present their experience during the seminar.

Objectives and activities
The participants will work on the following questions:
• How to stimulate user involvement and -participation within services?
• How to build up user groups, interest groups and advocacy groups?
• How to increase impact of user groups, interest groups and advocacy groups within the dialogue with service providers and decision makers?
• How can the different players in the field (service users, service providers, parents,…) support each other and contribute to the idea of ‘user involvement’?

Furthermore the participants will compare different models of best practice within different areas (drug user unions, sex work projects) and learn from each others experience.

Expected outcomes
The seminar will contribute to the idea that all parties involved need to work together and improve the access to social and health services for marginalised groups. By learning from each others experience and linking all parties to each other, the seminar will create a cross-boarder effect.