ICE project comes to Epping Forest
College
Epping Forest College students are taking
part in a county wide scheme which aims to improve
communication for Learners with Learning Difficulties
and/or Disabilities (LLDD).
Language is the core medium through which
college learning is mediated. Positive social
interactions with others are also dependent on
appropriate and effective communication. In addition,
language plays an important role for self-regulating of
behaviour and internalisation.
Students with even just a mild learning
disability are likely to be lagging behind the usual
milestones for language development. Within our LLDD
area, we have a very large number of students with
language difficulties ranging from mild right through to
profound, placing effective communication at the heart
of just about everything that we do.
In addition, too much of a students’ life
is determined by others. Many of our students need
greater opportunity to make more choices and decisions
for themselves.
With these things in mind, alternative
and augmentative (sign, symbols, photos, pictures,
objects of reference etc) methods of communication need
to be explored for effective learning and development of
language.
However, awareness of differing
communication and language needs amongst our students,
and knowing what to do to meet these needs, are two
entirely different matters. It requires enormous
organisation and dedicated time to look into these
issues, provide tailor made practical solutions to them,
action them and then review them at a later date to
ensure they are having the desired effect. With ten
years experience of working as Communication Support
Worker with Deaf Students behind her and as an LLDD
Tutor, Andrea Slade feels qualified to have taken on
this role within the LLDD department, which she believes
is essential to the learning of our LLDD students.
The Inclusive Communication Essex (ICE)
Project has a vision of inclusive communication for all
regardless of disability, and is working hard across
Essex, to enable this. They are widely used by Social
Services in day centres, care homes and childrens’ homes
as well as the NHS. They are tackling issues and are
enabling people from all walks of life to make it easier
to use their communication to ensure full inclusion in
making decisions and choices and allowing for as much
independence as possible. They feel that people have a
right to having their form of communication, whatever it
may be, being valued and accepted. They offer service
providers tools and materials and structures to make
things work, training, guidelines and accessible generic
information. In addition, they have regular sharing
days to establish what is happening across other sectors
within this area. Andrea attended their last sharing
day and was reassured that what we are already doing
towards inclusive communication at EFC, is very much on
the right lines.
Recently Jason Boyce, Resource Manager
from the ICE Project came to visit EFC to see first hand
what we are doing. He witnessed students from the St.
John’s School link personalising their Communication
Passports (these are a practical and person-centred way
of sharing key information for people who cannot easily
speak for themselves). He also met up with Mark
Stratton, Gavin King, Stacy Wilson and Susan Collins,
four of our students with very severe communication
difficulties.
Andrea said “I have been developing our
participation in, and developing strategies for, the ICE
Project. My initial objective was to set up the
resources to enable individual Communication Passports
for all our LLDD students and their tutors and LSAs.
During the early part of this academic year and as part
of their personal development programme, this was
achieved.” She went on to say that, “People are often
unsure how to approach and communicate with an
individual with communication difficulties or what
constitutes a good communication environment. I am now
openly discussing communication and language issues with
individual students and their tutors, identifying
communication and language issues and generating
resources that are beginning to break down barriers to
allow the students to adjust their communication
according to the needs of the situation.”