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Epping Forest College

News and Events

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.”