MacIntyre, in partnership with local Further Education (FE) colleges, has developed a curriculum-based programme of further education learning. The focus is to enable those students with learning difficulties and/or autism who would not excel in a traditional college-based environment. This support is commissioned by Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Leicestershire, Oxfordshire and Warwickshire
The curriculum is delivered to learners in a bespoke fashion as they prepare for adulthood. The learning programmes are focused on building the knowledge and skills that will equip the young person to navigate their transition into adulthood and support their plans for a healthy and ambitious future. The curriculum has a core framework that can be adapted to the aspirations and need of each learner.
This FE programme of learning is delivered in the communities/neighbourhoods that are important to the young person helping to contextualise and embed learning. Each student is enrolled with a college and the college outsource the bespoke programme of learning to MacIntyre.
Impact for people supported
The fundamental aim is for students who have been in receipt of special school education (SEND) to have access to further education avoiding the cliff edge faced by many children young people and families who experience a void as their school entitlement ends. Since its conception over 10 years ago MacIntyre has worked with over 10 college partners with an average of 200 young people enrolled on programmes during each academic year.
Macintyre aspires to offer an ambitious and inclusive programme of FE learning that will help shape an ambitious and purposeful start to adulthood. The learning takes place in the student’s local neighbourhood enabling real and purposeful learning to take place with their families support and involvement. This contextual learning helps to forge future links and possibilities for the young person and helping some to avoid traumatic moves away from their families and local neighbourhoods at a particularly stressful time of their life (transition). Macintyre tracks the ‘destination’ for each student as they leave their programme and here are some examples:
- A learner who was able to complete a Level 3 qualification independently and
is now at university; - A learner who found, applied for and has remained in supported employment
at a farm; and - A learner who, having been wholly dependent on his parents at the beginning
of his programme, was able to live in his own flat within a supported living
complex by the time he left. He has sustained the cooking, cleaning
and community access skills he developed during his programme.
Who else has benefitted and how
The benefits of the No Limits FE programme are numerous. First and foremost, students experience a structured, ambitious and purposeful transition into adulthood avoiding the notorious cliff edge experienced by so many disabled young people and their families as SEND education comes to an end.
For many the contextual learning enables the student and their family to foster positive and long term links with
employers, social enterprises, social groups and organisations and others in the local neighbourhood. This local engagement and connectivity can often be the dynamic that enables the young person to live, work, socialise and make a valuable contribution in a familiar area. For some, it can prevent a traumatic move to an ‘out of county placement’.
Families feel supported during what is a notoriously difficult time for their relative and the wider family (transition). They feel part of their relative’s life as they become adults and as they build local links for a move to higher education, employment and as their relative builds friendships and local connections. Working in partnership with colleges and providing this bespoke outsourced provision enables local disabled young people to have equal access to an ambitious FE programme of learning. MacIntyre No Limits ensures fair access to education for the local population.
In conjunction with the wider MacIntyre charity activity, No Limits students and staff make a valid contribution to ensuring that local neighbourhoods, business, organisations are inclusive places for all.
Key takeaways for other commissioners:
- Developing an ambitious and innovative option for young people in transition
- Investing in local partnership
- Preventing traumatic and expensive out of county placements
- Supporting neighbourhood inclusivity and connectivity
- Providing fair access to FE for local people
- Preventing individual and family crisis/breakdown