Isabel Weemaes from the European project 'I Know How' shares her experience with us.
Four European countries France, Belgium, the UK, the Netherlands have been participating in I Know How, a project intended to help sufferers of long-term illness return to work, should they wish to do so.
Project manager Isabel Weemaes shares her experience of the initiative with us.
"You might not be the same person as you were before," she says. "Because of treatments, you might have some symptoms that will never go away again. And you have to be able to speak about that with your employer and see what can be done about it. We see a lot of opportunities for new projects as well. For instance, colleagues were not really implicated within this project, but they're obviously very important in the relationship with the employee as well. And we noticed that some things can be done also for colleagues to make it easier to welcome a person after a long-term illness back into the team.
"It was very interesting to work together with the four countries and the different organisations in this in this project. So we have got: France, Belgium, the UK, and the Netherlands, which all have very different laws concerning return to work and also very different cultures. So the road map is actually what all the countries have in common. So it's a common concept with key moments for patients, employers and employees. And also each time, the three perspectives at certain key moments."
