Life in the Community

The Life in the Community project will give people with learning disabilities who need a lot of support more opportunities to do exciting things

We will explain to the people who work in services how they can help people with learning disabilities who need a lot of support

During the 3 years of this action research project, which was funded by the Mental Health Foundation and Baily Thomas Trust, we learned various ways to support people with complex learning disabilities to be more included in community life.

With our 4 voluntary sector partner organisations (Tamarisk Trust, Brandon Trust, Morrison Trust and Grapevine) we were able to support 34 people with complex support needs to be more included in their communities rather than relying on ‘traditional’ services.

Some of the key achievements included:

Less reliance upon specialist learning disability service
Person centred approaches and techniques led to greater job satisfaction amongst support staff, more choice and control for people at the centre of the process and greater involvement of family and other non-paid friends
Circles of support, where utilised, proved to be a cost effective way of coordinating planning and action for and around an individual
Community connectors had a key role in making it happen for people in the project
Developing individualised services in the community that are about ‘relationships’ rather than activities or buildings.

What's next?

The Foundation is pleased to be the recipient of a Section 64 grant, for innovation, excellence and service development to be used over 3 years. This will allow us to make use of our knowledge from the Life in the Community project by supporting third sector organisations to develop Community Connecting services.

Publications of the Life in the Community project

A Life in the Community: An action research project promoting citizenship for people with high support needs is the final report of the project. It provides a general overview of the project, analysis of findings, evaluation of outcomes as well as the personal stories of selected participants.

Connecting People: The steps to making it happen is a guide for those interested in setting up a community connecting service written by Clare Wightman from Grapevine in Coventry. A DVD accompanies the guidelines illustrating how some people with higher support needs have been helped to play a role in their communities.

Need 2 Know: Life in the Community is a briefing that sets out some advice for commissioners and care managers based on the findings from the project.

Stories from Life in the Community is a compilation DVD that brings together stories from across the sites that participated in the project. These videos were produced independently by the sites and were first screened at Building Community Networks 2009.

More information

For more information on the Life in the Community project please get in contact with Molly Mattingly at 0207 803 1100 or email mmattingly@fpld.org.uk

The project has been made possible with the help of a 3-year action research grant from the Mental Health Foundation and The Baily Thomas Charitable Fund