'Pathways To Getting A Life' Published

In the Autumn of 2010 NDTi, in partnership with Helen Sanderson Associates, facilitated 45 events across England gathering, building and sharing best practice information about transition years for people with learning disabilities.

Events we attended by and included contributions from young people, family members, transition specialist workers, educators, commissioners and people working in services. In each of the social care regions we held days looking at:

• Person-centred transition planning and personalisation
• Employment
• Housing
• Health
• Friends, relationships and community

Key messages from these events included:

• Transition is not about planning services, its about planning lives. It should be a time of creativity with great choices.
• Transition planning needs to start early and be lead by young people and their families.
• We need to start working on the outcomes of plans in time to deliver real choices and opportunities.
• Education and transition planning must encourage and support employment.
• Transition should be based on the idea that young people with learning disabilities will live in inclusive communities.
• Person-centred approaches to health planning with young people are critically important.
• Everyone should have a place in the community. Sometimes it takes real creativity to make this happen.

The outcomes of these events contributed to and are reported in detail in Pathways To Getting A Life report.

The Getting a Life Programme was a three year government funded programme which included 400 hundred young people across England. The young people and their families co-produced the pathways which then became embedded in the 2014 Children and Families Act as the Preparing for Adulthood pathways.