Individual learning programmes are tailored to support learners’ needs

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Information

Coleg Elidyr is a residential independent specialist college for young people aged 18 to 30 years with autism, learning difficulties and disabilities. All learners reside in one of the college’s six residential houses set in a 180 acres in rural Carmarthenshire.

The site includes its own groceries shop, a small-holding and kitchen garden, a bed and breakfast facility, and a soap and bathbomb making enterprise. It is also home to a further 27 young people with learning difficulties and disabilities.

The college’s mission is to enable people with learning difficulties and disabilities to develop their knowledge and skills and reach their full potential, while living and working in a community.

Context and background to the practice

Coleg Elidyr has over forty years’ experience of using multi-sensory purposeful activities to drive learning and development. At the college, the traditional crafts of weaving, green woodwork and carpentry are offered alongside printmaking, candle and soap making. For many learners, the processes and rhythm associated with the creation of craft objects reduces anxieties and sensory overloads. Often, the nature of repetitive activites provide reassurance and predictability to build learners’ confidence in their environments. As wellbeing and self assurance grow, so does receptiveness to learning opportunities. Engagment in craft activites also provides indirect opportunities for purposeful interactions.

This understanding of how very specific activities can enhance individuals’ ability to engage in learning has informed the college’s approach to creating highly differentiated learning programmes. Learning programmes ensure that knowledge and understanding of learners’ therapeutic and support requirements are well-matched to their developmental needs and post-college aspirations.

For individual learners this means that meaningful multi-sensory activities that enhance wellbeing are integrated into individual learning programmes (ILPs) in the seven areas of citizenship, health and wellbeing, self-advocacy, independent learning skills, household skills, digital literacy, literacy and numeracy.

ILPs are agreed, monitored and reviewed by a multi-disciplinary team comprising tutors, learning support staff, curriculum co-ordinators, house managers and a therapeutic team that includes a total communication co-ordinator, occupational therapist, and speech and language therapist.

Description of the nature of strategy or activity idientified as effective or innovative practice

Following an initial six-week baseline assessment of learners’ abilities in all ILP areas, short-term targets and medium and longer-term goals in each ILP area are agreed by the multi-disciplinary team. Learning goals accommodate identified factors such as sensory processing difficulties, physical limitations and self-regulatory needs and are addressed through curriculum areas as well as during evenings and weekends.

In practice for example, the occupational therapist may have identified how a learner may benefit from activities involving physical resistance to allow him or her to self-regulate and manage his or her anxieties. Concurrently, the speech and language therapist may have recommended that the same learner would benefit from increased opportunities to initiate social communication. Incorporating these recommendations to support the development of skills in each ILP area, a learner may be guided to take responsibility for milk deliveries from the college shop to its residential houses. By using a wheelbarrow to deliver milk, the learner’s need for activities involving physical resistance is met. It will also require him/her to engage in social interactions with the learners and staff in houses as s/he makes their deliveries.

It will also support the development of skills in all ILP areas. For example:

• Citizenship: by developing understanding of self and others through making a contribution to community living
• Health and wellbeing: through physical exercise to promote physical health and mental wellbeing
• Self-advocacy: by communicating with other learners and staff
• Independent learning skills: through problem-solving associated with undertaking tasks with increased independence
• Household skills: through developing understanding of milk as household commodity
• Digital literacy: as appropriate to the individual but could involve emailing to confirm milk orders
• Literacy and numeracy: by understanding and recording how much milk should be delivered to each house

As learners progress through their programmes, they are supported to transfer vocational and life skills to the wider community, for example by working in a supermarket or planning and transitioning to post-college living.

Impact on provision and learners’ standards

The college has developed robust processes to recognise and record progress that clearly demonstrate learners’ abilities and the progress made within their individual learning programmes. This approach allows for the measuring of developmental steps between levels and the tailoring of support. It also ensures that skills development is focused and grounded in purposeful activities.

At its recent inspection of the college in October 2019, Estyn inspectors noted:

“Nearly all learners make outstanding progress. In relation to their individual starting points, nearly all learners exceed their personal targets and make exceptional progress towards fulfilling their potential. As a result they leave the college better prepared for the next stage in their lives.”