The Chance B model for social services in rural areas of Eastern Styria

Since 1989, Chance B has been offering social services in Eastern Styria that are designed to enable all people in the region to live independently.

Today, the Chance B model provides a comprehensive portfolio of social services with the aim of being able to provide suitable services for all people with support needs – from birth to old age and for all areas of life, while recognising the uniqueness of each individual, thereby meeting the wide range of people's social needs and enabling disadvantaged people to participate in all areas of society in accordance with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

The jigsaw piece in the Chance B logo symbolises this diversity of the Chance B model with its variety of services, which interlock to enable people to lead a self-determined life with the greatest possible autonomy in four areas:

  • Child and family – because the earliest possible support enables great progress
  • Education and work – because people who have work feel part of the community
  • Housing and leisure – because feeling at home means self-determination.
  • Health and old age – because care, therapy and support at home mean quality of life

The cornerstones of the Chance B model are

  • Holistic approach: the needs and potential of people in the region take centre stage, regardless of age, disability or life situation.
  • Individualised support: Service provision is tailored to each person so that they can live as independent a life as possible in the midst of society.
  • Regional anchoring: Social services are primarily provided on a mobile basis in rural areas, reaching people where they live and work, in families, schools, communities and companies.
  • Innovative projects: Implementation of regional, national and international projects for finding new needs-based solutions and the ongoing development of existing services.
  • Strong co-operation: Active involvement in overarching networks to improve the socio-political framework conditions.

In other words, the Chance B model is about

  • making social services available close to home in rural areas
  • opening up motivating prospects for all people for a self-determined life in the centre of society
  • running social enterprises with valuable services for society and creating stable jobs for people with disadvantages
  • designing innovative projects in order to meet the diverse challenges of the future in a solution-orientated and sustainable way
  • recruiting people who are competent and committed to their work and who are committed to human rights
  • creating diverse jobs so that rural areas can continue to be a vibrant place to live for everyone in the future
  • accessing and identifying public funding so that the necessary support services can be reliably provided
  • improving the social framework conditions for the living conditions of all people in rural areas through networking and participation in committeessustainably influencing the legal and financial framework conditions for the provision of social services on behalf of the public sector, and
  • contributing to the implementation of the UN Convention in Austria.

Responsible Department

The services of Chance B are offered by the sub-companies of the Chance B Group, which is a non-profit holding company.

The Chance B Association is the sole shareholder of Chance B Holding GmbH, which, together with its operating subsidiaries, is responsible for the implementation of the social services.

All companies form the Chance B Group and work together in the Chance B model to provide comprehensive and customised support for independent living for people with disabilities and other disadvantaged groups. The portfolio comprises 31 social services in the areas of children and family, education and work, housing and leisure as well as health and old age.


Target group

The 31 social services included in the Chance B model are offered to people with support needs in Eastern Styria where they live and work. The target groups for the different services, which are offered regardless of gender for all ages from infants to the elderly for the person concerned and their family or professional environment, include

  • people with disabilities (intellectual, physical, sensory)
  • people with mental illnesses or dual diagnoses
  • people who find the transition from school to work difficult for a variety of reasons
  • long-term unemployed and jobseekers with a low level of qualification who need support in accessing the first labour market
  • people with age-related illnesses

Methodologies and approaches

The Chance B model is a good-practice example of community-based services committed to quality of life and work. It is based on a holistic, person-centred approach. The focus is always on the person and the goal that this person wants to achieve. Based on this, the 31 services are specialised depending on the occasion or phase of life. In some cases, services are offered for a certain period of time, in other cases on a permanent basis.

Professionals provide qualitative impulses, contribute to the support themselves and activate others so that the entire network around the supported person also works towards the goal. If necessary, they connect with and refer to other specialists.

For example, in the service “Early Support for hearing impaired children”, the child's entire environment is involved in addition to direct support for the hearing-impaired child.

Or in the area of health, the CRISP (CReative Intensity with Innovative Spaces and People) therapy approach to promote motor learning and brain development, was developed in Chance B in close dialogue with patients, parents and international experts to make successful therapy possible by establishing a creative team around the child consisting of all those involved, such as parents, grandparents, teaching staff, friends and relatives, who accompany the therapy process in the long term.

In the area of education and work, the central approach is the concept of "supported employment" which aims to help people with disabilities find and keep a job in the open labour market, secured by an employment contract and paid in line with collective agreements. Instead of preparing people with disabilities for jobs that do not exist, the vocational training takes place in companies in the region which cooperate with Chance B and where Chance B professionals work in the company alongside the person/s with a disability.


Innovation and creativity

Innovation:

Over time, people's needs change, as do social and socio-political conditions. The Chance B model combines strong regional roots with European commitment and implements regional, national and European projects to keep pace with these developments and constantly find new, needs-based solutions for beneficiaries and employees. The aim is to receive funding for the development of innovative approaches and solutions that improve the living conditions and participation of people with support needs and strengthen their support.

Project topics are diverse and, like the Chance B model, organised along the lifeline: They range from support for young families and inclusive education to vocational education for formally low-skilled adults, from support for young people with disabilities or mental health issues in the transition from school to work, to support and care for older people with disabilities.

Creativity:

Creativity is an indispensable component of person-centred work when it comes to developing individual solutions to achieve goals together with the beneficiaries and their support networks on the basis of existing framework conditions.

Creativity is also an essential element of services in the area of education and work. In conjunction with the core task of labour market qualification and increasing motivation, people are introduced to meaningful activities by creating attractive products under Chance B's own "gut" brand. The holistic approach of the Chance B model is also evident here: customers want a product - this is manufactured at Chance B while people with disabilities are trained; regional resources are used and sustainability is promoted, for example with upcycling, circular economy approaches against food waste or giving waste materials a second life.

Another example of creative solutions is the development of a mobile workshop from a shipping container. This mobile event centre can be used to bring offers and events to people in the region.


Support to Independent Living

The are offered to people who need support and to their families. With the support services for all areas and phases of life included in the Chance B model, people with disabilities should be able to live well in their families, attend kindergarten and school, complete vocational training, take up a profession and work, grow old actively and thus live as independently as possible.

The primary goal is to provide sustainable impetus by opening up prospects for people to lead a self-determined life. In all cases, attempts are made to find individual ways to meet the specific needs of the users based on the range of standardised services.

Some people need support at certain stages of their lives, while others are supported by Chance B from childhood to adulthood. To achieve this, it is necessary to collaborate across all areas and to plan for all areas of life (education, work, housing, leisure) and across all areas of work (care, education, therapy, medicine, job placement, personal assistance...).

Some examples from different areas and phases of life:

  • Audiopedagogical early intervention offers individualised support for families of hearing impaired or deaf children, in which cooperation with doctors, therapists and hearing aid acousticians is just as important as the involvement of parents in everyday support in the sense of holistic developmental support.
  • In addition to full-time assisted living, Chance B also offers support to train living independently in one’s own flat. People with disabilities can live here under supervision for two to three years, gaining as much independence as possible during this time so that they can later live alone.
  • Through qualification in the workplace and individual training in the field of digitalisation, new career prospects are created in the socio-economic enterprises and users strengthen their self-confidence at the same time.

Staff and resources

Employees:

The Chance B model requires a variety of qualifications from the staff employed: in the Chance B universe, there are many different professional profiles, specialists from a wide range of professional backgrounds. This makes Chance B one of the largest employers in the region.

One of the success factors of the Chance B model is the fact that many of the professionals live and work in the same context as their beneficiaries. This means that these employees not only have the professional expertise, but they also know the network around their clients best and can therefore activate it well, and on the other hand have their own network that can invovled, in line with the credo of the Chance B model: We seek cooperation with many others, Chance B does not want to do everything alone.

Resources:

Another credo of the Chance B model is: more cars than houses - because we provide support where people live and work

Chance B is active at 16 locations in Eastern Styria. More than one million kilometres are covered annually to provide mobile support in the region.

Materials:

The 31 different services use contemporary materials from all disciplines, from assistive technology for communication, to toys in early intervention, from work materials and equipment for a restaurant, a sewing workshop, wood workshops, green space management, ... to the equipment of the therapeutic institute.


Identifying specific needs

The development of services based on the specific needs of people in the region has always been a driving force in the Chance B model.

The basic approach remains the same: Chance B brings together the people concerned, their environment, service providers and authorities to identify typical problems, gaps or interface issues, and to find improvements or develop new solutions.

For example, when mothers had to travel long distances for short therapy sessions for their children with disabilities, therapists and parents worked together to find alternatives. This led to the creation of the first mobile therapy service with a health insurance contract in Styria and the opening of an outpatient therapy centre for children and young people with disabilities in Gleisdorf in 1993.

Chance B was also a pioneer in mobile home nursing care. In 1991, after consulting with regional mayors, the first community nurse and manager for mobile care were employed. This service was later expanded across Styria.

Even today, new services continue to be anchored in the Styrian legislation, for example the “Daily support for the elderly” in 2024.

All services follow a holistic, person-centred approach. Life plans are developed in co-production with people with disabilities through dialogue on equal footing, promoting decision-making and personal responsibility. Personal future planning supports individuals in shaping their life and work with appropriate assistance.

Self-representation is actively practised in day care and assisted living settings. Group and team spokespersons contribute through reflection and feedback, helping to shape the programmes.


Other stakeholders and partners

In order to guarantee the broad spectrum of services, a central element of the Chance B model is the continuous collaboration with companies, schools, parents, families, relatives, authorities, social work, doctors, other service organisations and various other contact persons in the region.

This document refers at various points to how the immediate and wider environment of the supported persons is involved in different areas, see e.g. point 2.5 with the example of CRISP Therapy from the area of health.

A particular example from the field of education and work is the KomKom network: a cooperation of seven Austrian service providers that have been working together since 2023 on the further development and use of basic qualifications, which are based on the KomKom approach developed in Chance B, and which are assigned to the National Qualifications Framework (NQF). They are used to validate the professional, social and personal skills of formally low-skilled individuals. For this initiative, Chance B was honoured with the Zero Award 2025.

In addition to the direct provision of services, employees, managers and the Chance B management are active in various committees and contribute their expertise to relevant umbrella organisations and interest groups at regional, national and European level.