Day care learning

What opportunities are there for a person with learning disabilities? Well, there's school, and then college. Some people may be able to find work after they leave college but a lot of adults with learning disabilities spend their time at day care centres. These can sometimes feel a bit like a 'Cinderella service', rarely mentioned in the press,who are often only interested in the Care Sector when there has been some scandal, and often not known about in the local area. To communicate effectively with the outside world, a day care centre needs a sense of dynamism, and although it can take a lot of effort to achieve these links with the outside world, the impact it can have on the students' lives can be huge.

I had a conversation recently with someone visiting from Europe as part of an exchange programme and I asked her what day care centres were like in her home country of Belgium. She said, because they were centrally funded, that they were far more like care homes, where adults with learning disabilities were just entertained all day, whereas because our day care centre was independently run, we had the opportunity for greater innovation, with more projects aimed at getting adults with learning disabilities into meaningful work. She felt it was a different feel; our day care centre felt exciting.

Day care centres need a sense of dynamism

In the spirit of innovation, we developed a new project under the pressure of lockdown. When the Covid 19 pandemic hit, our day care centre was forced to close, initially for six months. This placed enormous pressure on the caregivers to find activities for our students, so, we set up an online service of some of the activities we provide, covering four sessions a day with a social club every day. This kept the students connected to the staff and other students as well as giving them meaningful activities to engage with. When we came out of lockdown, we used the work we had done to develop a new virtual learning environment for adults with learning disabilities. Our vision was to create a service that catered both for those that were attending day care centres and those who were unable to attend them, such as those who were perhaps housebound or only had limited activities they could engage in. One model of a typical user is summed up in the words of Chris, one of our