More on Rix Living Lab
Creating information for people with learning disabilities, their parents and carers
The Rix Centre is working in collaboration with Newham Local Authority on a pilot project exploring the potential for provision of accessible information for young people with learning disabilities on the themes of transition to adulthood and support for independent living after school. This programme of work is joint funded by the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE), BP and the Jack Petchey Foundation. The Rix Centre leads implementation of the project with a team that includes a full-time staff member seconded from the Local Authority Learning Disability Support Team.
Forty two ‘easy build’ satellite websites are being built by groups and individuals in the London Borough of Newham. Twenty-eight are being developed by people with learning disabilities with the help of their supporters. Professionals in the learning disability field are developing the other fourteen
The first round of initial training is now complete. Each group or individual has had at least one training session and we are now organising further training and support for the web developers as required.
In our workshop programme we encourage the novice web developers to make content around the themes of transition that were identified by young people as being the most important in the Road Ahead report commissioned by SCIE and published in November 2004 – see: http://www.scie.org.uk/publications/tra/index.asp. The transition themes identified in the research are:
- Work and work experience
- Safety
- Being independent
- Friends and family
- Relationships
- Drinking, going out, fun and partying
- Shopping
- Money
- College
- Travel
The participants are asked to think about and discuss what happened when they left school in a pre-workshop task. They are asked to brainstorm ideas around these topics and take some photographs to bring to the one-day workshop.
