PRESENTATION OF SPEAKERS
Malmö 29-30 June 2006
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Eva Sjöstedt, Chairwoman of the city district council Kirseberg (Malmö)
Eva Sjöstedt is a Social Democratic member of the city council of Malmö and the chairwoman of the city district council Kirseberg. She is also a member of the city executive board. Email: eva.a.sjostedt@malmo.se
Rolf Nilson, Social housing coordinator (Malmö)
Since 2001 Rolf L Nilson is coordinating the work against homelessness in Malmö. He is also the project manager of catch. Rolf L Nilson has an examination as a Psychologist at the University of Lund. He has worked as a lecturer and senior lecturer at the University of Lund, as well as a behavioural scientist in occupational health services. Rolf L Nilson has also been a politician at local, regional and at the national level. Email: rolf.l.nilson@malmo.se
Montserrat Maresma Gual, ADIGSA (Barcelona)
After graduating in Cultural Anthropology Montserrat Maresma Gual’s professional career began in the Documentation Centre of the Jaume Balmes University in Vic and in the National Library of Catalonia. She then entered ADIGSA, working in the technician management of the “Posa’t a punt” program (“Get ready”), with other social programs like “Communitarian Development Plans”. Her responsibilities were increasing in the program of labour insertion and in the field of social projects, and European Projects and Social Housing, etc. where she has her actual duty. Montserrat Maresma Gual is responsible of Labour Insertion and Social Projects programs. Email: mmaresmag@gencat.net
Emilio López i Mompó, ADIGSA (Barcelona)
Emilio López has graduated in Philosophy at the Navarra University. He is a social technician of the Net Inclusion Housing in Catalonia as well as a technician of various European programs like catch and REVITASUD, in the Social Project Service of ADIGSA. Also, he is studying the subsidies that ADIGSA concedes to different Catalan entities. Emilio López has worked in the socio-labor program “Get ready” (social clause). Further he has worked in the Economic and Social Development Plans of the Welfare Department of the Generalitat of Catalonia. Email: elopezm@gencat.net
Andrea Arcelli, Municipality of Bologna (Bologna)
Andrea Arcelli has graduated in Political Sciences at the Bologna University. He has also finished post graduate studies in EU Law. He was a consultant in 1999-2000 for ASTER S.p.a. (Agency for the Technological Development of the Emilia Romagna Region) where he researched on the modalities of co-operation between small and medium sized enterprises (SME) and Universities. Andrea Arcelli has also worked for the External Relations and International Project Office of the Municipality of Bologna from December 2000 to the end of 2002. In 2003 he worked in Brussels for Health Information Management S.A. where he managed several EU funded projects related to ICT applied to Healthcare. Since 2004, he re-joined the External Relations and International Project Office of the Municipality of Bologna where he is currently managing several projects under different EU Programmes (eTEN, VFP-IST, CULTURE 2000). E-mail: Andrea.Arcelli@comune.bologna.it
Ulli Knecht, Social worker at the Salvation Army (Vienna)
Ulli Knecht is a Social worker, born in Germany, working for the Salvation Army in Austria. She has graduated in Pedagogic at the Vienna University and she has been working as a social worker in the Viennese Homelessness Aid since 1994; first in a project of supervised housing for homeless women and families and since 1999 for the Salvation Army in a transitory shelter for homeless men with and without mental diseases. Ulli Knecht is a member of the BAWO women’s study group. Catch is her first EU-project. Email: Ulli_Knecht@swi.salvationarmy.org
Morgan Johansson, Minister for Public Health and Social Services (Stockholm)
Morgan Johansson has a B.A in political science from Lund University. He likes to say that a society should be judged by the way it treats its most vulnerable citizens. Are mistreated children given support and help? Are people forced to sleep in doorways and under bridges? Is treatment given to substance abusers? These are the questions one should pose when judging a society. These are the questions by which policies are tested. Anyone can organise welfare for the broad middle class but the situation faced by those who are the most vulnerable is the true indication of whether a society is a good one to live in. Based upon that viewpoint, it can be concluded that we still have a quite a few problems in Sweden. From Morgan Johanssons perspective, care of drug misusers and psychiatry are issues of special concern. He believes that it is important to understand the connection. Care of drug misusers is the key to at least three major social problems daily crime, prostitution and homelessness. Which brings us to homelessness. Not all of the homeless, but many of them, also have a substance abuse problem often alcoholism, but sometimes it can be drugs, which increasingly involves polydrug abuse. So any politician wanting to reduce homelessness must invest in care for drug misusers. We do not want to live in a country where people are forced to live in doorways and under bridges. We do not want to live in a country where an increasing number of people die from their drug abuse. We do want to live in a country where human dignity applies to everyone, and where everyone can get a second, and a third and a fourth chance. We do not want to live in a country where children are not given the chance to grow up in secure conditions. Email: elisabeth.malmborg-freire@social.ministry.se
Ulla Beijer, Research assistant & PhD student (Stockholm)
Ulla Beijer is an educated Social Worker (BSW) and since 1970s she has met children and families, people with alcohol and drug abuse, mental problems, and homeless men and women in her work. Since 1995, she works as a Research Assistant at Unit of Research and Development in Stockholm City, she also belongs to the Department of Public Health Sciences at Karolinska Institutet where she, as a PhD student, works with her theses about homelessness and health. Since 1995 she has performed approximately 15 empirical studies that have been showed in more than twenty different reports and articles. The studies are mainly about homeless people and their situation, and approximately a third is totally or partly about homeless women. One study, for example, is about 341 women who had stayed, at least one night during a two-year period, in a community shelter for women. The study shows, their cause of homelessness, experience of physical and mental abuse, the prevalence of serious mental problems, abuse of alcohol or illicit drugs, how often they had stayed at the shelter during the years, the extent of diseases and injuries that had required hospital care, and their number of children (Beijer 1988). Another example is an evaluation of an Outreach Project for homeless women. The aim of the project was to reach reserved homeless women who assessed having the most difficult situation. The results showed that homeless
women with mental problems in combination with misuse of alcohol or drugs did not get help in the same extent as homeless women who only had alcohol or drug problems. This later group had easier to demand help and (for that reason) also received more help from the outreach workers (Beijer 2001). Instead of making the project progress the activity was closed. In this social and research work, Ulla Beijer has experienced that homeless women is a subordinated group in the homeless population, and furthermore also in the help system. The homeless women are nearly almost the losers. From another perspective their situation makes clearly visible that women have different conditions. The subordinated position results in bad health. The homeless women had, for example, a double risk to be hospitalised for serious physical diseases or injuries compared to women in the Swedish population. To change this situation, reduce the homeless women’s suffering and contribute to their equality, they need (apart from treatment) a place to live and work, a help system, Social Work and Health Care, that cooperate successfully, and researchers that are interested to follow and document the improvements. Email: ulla.beijer@stadshuset.stockholm.se
Annette Rosengren, Researcher (Stockholm)
Annette Rosengren, PhD in ethnology, is working at Nordiska museet in Stockholm. She has thirty years experience of doing documentary on contemporary subcultures in Sweden. In the end of the 1990s she started to follow homeless drug addicted women in Stockholm and she completed the book “Mellan ilska och hopp - om hemlöshet, kvinnor och droger” (In between anger and hope- about homelessness, women and drugs) in 2003. Annette Rosengren is now working on a book about asylum seekers in Sweden. Annette Rosengren stats that homelessness and asylum policies are two examples of the back side of “the best country in the world”, as Sweden often claims to be. This is a result of the fear for “the Other” and of the reluctant of improving politics. Human beings should have the right to their own home, “a place where only I have the key and where I can decide who is allowed inside”, as women without a home once stated. Women are more exposed than men although you can not say that only women need protection and a place to stay. Though it is necessary that the female perspectives are made visible. In research, homelessness is usually considered as a structural as well as an individual problem, but in official rhetoric the defectiveness of the individual has dominated. Annette Rosengren claims that we ought to acknowledge homelessness more as a structural problem and a result of power structures and lack of housing politics to secure housing for all groups in our society. She would be happy to see a national and international movement against the expansion of homelessness and poverty, constituted by homeless people of different kinds, social workers, NGO- workers, researchers, politicians and socially interested people in general. Annette Rosengren does not work with homeless people today but she is in the board of a NGO organisation/shelter in Stockholm - Ny Gemenskap (New Community). She is still in contact with some of the women she met during her field work who, even at this point, are almost in the same homeless situation as before. Annette Rosengren follows contemporary research on homelessness and takes part in a ongoing Nordic network of research on homelessness. Email: annette.rosengren@nordiskamuseet.se
Uta Enders-Dragässer, Reseracher (Frankfurt am Main)
Dr. Uta Enders-Dragässer, sociologist, educationalist, women's studies researcher, is research director of the independent non-profit women's studies research center Gesellschaft für Sozialwissenschaftliche Frauenforschung e.V. (www.gsfev.de) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, which she has established in 1993 together with Dr. Brigitte Sellach. Her research activities (since 1980) cover a wide field: socialisation effects of schools on mothers, sexism in school, gender specific interactions in school, gender sensitive work in school; gender sensitive youth work with girls; child care resp. school age child care as an mother's issue; women in psychiatry; single mothers and poverty; change management in homes for the elder; support services for homeless women, professional training and (re)integration for homeless women; homeless women and men as target groups with specific needs; implementation of gender mainstreaming (evaluation research for the German Government). Her theoretical work concerns the gendered developing of the “Lebenslagen” (“life position”) approach of the German poverty research together with Brigitte Sellach. She has from time to time participated in transnational research, for instance ”equality in education” (Council of Europe); national report on women, homelessness and social exclusion in Germany (FEANTSA); external evaluation of EU-DAPHNE-projects; networking ( School age childcare ENSAC; gender mainstreaming - GMEI) She has published widely in German and English. Email: post@gsfev.de
Dearbhal Murphy, Policy officer at FEANTSA (Brussels)
Dearbhal Murphy is Policy Officer at FEANTSA (European Federation of National Organisations Working with Homeless People). She is responsible for FEANTSA’s policy work in the area of health and is coordinator of the FEANTSA working group on Health and Social Protection. This group works on issues related to the health of homeless people across Europe and on addressing homelessness from a health perspective. Dearbhal Murphy will be closely involved in piloting FEANTSA’s work in 2006, when the organisation’s annual theme will be “The right to health is a human right: ensuring access to health for homeless people”. FEANTSA will look at a variety of questions related to health and homelessness in the course of the year and will hold a conference on this theme in Wroclaw in Poland in October 2006. Email: dearbhal.murphy@feantsa.org
Göran Larsson, EU co-ordinator at the Salvation Army (Stockholm)
Göran Larsson has got a present position in The Salvation Army as a Officer for EU Affairs and his current rank within the organisation is Major. Göran Larsson has worked as a Salvation Army officer since 1969 in different programmes in Sweden, Russia, Latvia, the United Kingdom and the USA. He was in charge of Salvation Army relief aid to Russia in 1991-1993. Göran Larsson is presently employed by The Salvation Army International Headquarters, Europe Department in
London, United Kingdom. He represents The Salvation Army in all EU institutions working mainly from Brussels and travels around all the EU Member States where The Salvation Army is at work. He is a board member of the EAPN (European Anti-Poverty Network) Executive Committee in Brussels since 1999 representing the European Organisations in membership of EAPN as well as a board member of the FEANTSA (European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless) Administrative Council since 2004 representing national organisations in Sweden working with the homeless. He is also a chairman of the Swedish Network on housing and homelessness (FEANTSA Sweden) since 2004. He is as well a board member of the Swedish Network against Social Exclusion since 2000 whose main aim is to influence the National Action Plans against Poverty and Social Exclusion (NAPsincl). Email: Goran_Larsson@salvationarmy.org
Sofia Sjödin, catch coordinator (Malmö)
Sofia Sjödin is the project coordinator of catch. Sofia Sjödin has studied economy and she has a master of political science from the University of Lund. Her interest for EU as well as social politics is deeply embedded and Sofia Sjödin did her internship at an enterprise working with social economy and regional development in Brussels in 2003. Email: sofia.sjodin@malmo.se
Jimmie Trevett, Moderator (Malmö)
Jimmie Trevett is working on a local and central level for Riskförbundet för social och mental hälsa (RSMH) which is a national organisation for social and mental health. He works with questions within the mental health area and thus the complex problems of homelessness.
Paolo Brusa, Parella (Turin)
Paolo Brusa has got a doctorship in Psychology. He works with Parella and on a free lance basis he is occupied with various private psychological activity. He is also a supervisor, project manager and a trainer. Email: paolobrus@hotmail.com