The Awards were an innovation for this year’s conference—and very popular they were too! Nominations were sought in three categories:

• The client with outstanding personal achievement

• The centre most successful in transition for clients

• The centre offering most innovative practice

Judging was not an easy task—so many thanks go to Dave Fullerton and Mubina Asaria for the professional job they did. They found it very difficult to decide between some of the nominations, and we did award a number of Commendations as well as the awards.

Personal Achievement

The winner was Rachel, from the Center for Deaf-Blind Persons at the Beth David Insti-tute in Tel Aviv. Rachel is pictured here re-ceiving her award from Tim Simon, one of the Trustees on his recent visit. Rachel has Usher Syndrome, which is a genetic syn-drome that causes congenital deafness and progressive blindness. She studied – and now teaches – in Tel Aviv at the Karten Centre there.

Rachel came to the Karten CTEC in 2007 and began to learn computer skills, including the Oovoo program, which allows visual communication between two parties on the com-puter screen. Early in 2008 she successfully completed her studies. A series of meetings with and between the Center’s Employment Initiative Coordinator and the Karten CTEC Coordinator and additional studies, combined with her natural talent and good work ethic, helped her learn to teach. She has worked with Daniel for some time now, and found creative ways to work with him. In fact Rachel has been more than a teacher: she has been a role model too and proof that the student can become the teacher. She also knows ISL (Israeli Sign Language), which is how they communicate with each other, as he has sufficient residual vision to see signs. Overall, Rachel was able to really under-stand Daniel, to empathize with him, to understand his Usher Syndrome from personal experience, to understand his difficulties learning (as she encountered them herself not long before) and to suit the lessons to his level of learning, which is similar to her own. All of this more than made up for her lack of professional certificates and experience.

Many congratulations to Rachel on her achievements, and to all her work with her.

Success in Transition

The winners of this award were Orchardville Society, which is a Belfast based voluntary organisation and charity which provides skills development, employment opportunities and a range of social economy activities to over 200 young people and adults with learning disability and Autistic Spectrum Disorder. Pictured is Michael Walker, Business Centre Manager, receiving the award from Ian Karten and Graham Jowett.

In May 2009 Orchardville introduced new procedures for evaluating the development of trainee’s skills. The centre prides itself on continually improving the skills and employability of their students, but felt they lacked a formal mechanism to monitor progress and performance towards this goal. They have always compiled monthly records of students who progress from training into employment; however, over a period of time they came to believe that a much more in depth process was required.

The trainee skill evaluations are essentially individual learning plans, where incremental improvements to trainee’s skills are targeted and measured on a rolling six monthly basis. Working with adults with severe learning disability means that quite simplistic learning and development goals are often included, however, Orchardville firmly believe that continuing the personal and skills development of all of their students is fundamental to their approach. The skill evaluation of every student in the centre is reviewed at six monthly intervals and is used to inform and shape how best to assist the student progress towards employment.

It was this approach that convinced the judges that Orchardville were worthy winners. And you can see what their students felt about it!

October 13th proved to be a very lucky day for Orchardville Society: they also won a regional National Training Award on the same day.

If you want to learn more about the approach that Orchardville Society have adopted, please contact Michael Walker on michael.walker@orchardville.com.

Congratulations to everyone at Orchardville.

Innovative Practice

The award for innovative practice went to the Percy Hedley Foundation Karten Media Suite (KMS). Pictured is Michael Curtis with Juliette and Richard (2 of the Project Workers), receiving their award from Ian. At KMS the team have worked on a variety of video projects from short animations to documentaries—including the Tyne Tunnel Wheelchair Race! Learning has been faciltated using individual projects which have led to a number of commis-sioned videos. Until recently clients worked at KMS on a sessional basis, but have decided to change to a project based working practice. This is viewed as an important step towards establishing KMS as a social enterprise. Another recent project was the filming of a fashion show run by a well known chain. The footage was broadcast on the local news as the professional film crew arrived too late to film the show!

Well done to Percy Hedley Foundation and the Karten Media Suite—and we really did appreciate you making the journey down to Birmingham. I understand their interview with Ian will shortly be available on the Karten Network website, so keep your eyes pealed.

If you would like to learn more about what the KMS does, please contact Kevin Taylor on k.taylor@percyhedley.org.uk .

Graham Jowett

Graham Jowett was a biochemist, but moved out of research and into social work in inner London through his involvement in voluntary youth and community work. After qualifying as a social worker, he worked with people with learning difficulties and in a residential unit for young people with acute mental health problems.
He then taught and managed social care and health studies courses in large urban FE colleges. Before becoming Principal of Treloar College in 1995, he was responsible for a department at Crawley College delivering vocational programmes in health, care, early years, counselling, catering, hotel management, hairdressing and beauty therapy, leisure and tourism and a degree in occupational therapy.
He has been a part-time FE inspector and external examiner, a member of the Hampshire and Isle-of-Wight Learning and Skills Council and is now on the LSC South East Regional Council.
He retired recently from his role of Director of Education for the Treloar Trust, but continues to provide support with oversight of the strategic planning of the Trust’s services for young people with disabilities.

Rachel Morris

Michael Walker

Michael Walker B.A. (Hons), M.A., graduate of Queens University, Belfast brings together the focus of Supported Employment and Social Economy through his unique career experience.
Initially Michael worked for a national recruitment solutions provider placing persons with and without disability in all employment sectors. Through this his interest in the disability sector was spawned. He moved to The Orchardville Society bringing with him both quality processes and experience of the recruitment sector. Michael initially led as the first Job Finder employed by the organisation and as such brought a new approach to employer engagement.
After two years Michael successfully applied for his current post as Manager of the Orchardville Business Centre (Karten CTEC Centre) and has been innovative in both the business direction and skill opportunities offered to people with severe learning disability. Michael’s approach has benefited from his knowledge of Supported Employment and how Social Economy Businesses can offer that very important “first step” into the real work environment.
Michael’s drive and vision have led to Orchardville Business Centre becoming Belfast’s first Social Economy Printing facility. This again will offer people with severe learning disability and/or autism new opportunities for skills development.

Paul Hambling

Paul left school at 16 to join Royal Navy, invalided from the service after six years due to loss of arm in road traffic accident.
Joined Civil Service and worked within the Job Centre service in Portsmouth for 5 years including 2 years as a disablement resettlement officer
Joined print & packaging company in Halifax as production manager rising to Production Director for 10 years
Started and ran own print & packaging company in Leeds for 11 years
Moved south and worked for a further year in print and packaging before joining Enham at the start of 2007 as Commercial Manager.
Promoted to Head of Industries after 5 month sitting on the Executive Board.

Andrew Fellowes

Kate Gascoyne

Rohan Slaughter

Rohan Slaughter is the manager of the Technology Department at Beaumont College in Lancaster. Beaumont is Scope’s National Further Education College catering for young people aged 18-25 with cerebral palsy and other similar conditions. Rohan oversees both mainstream IT staff and ‘technologists’ who work with students to deploy ‘special access’ hardware and software solutions. The College describes the ‘technologists’ as “working at the interface of people and technology”. Rohan is also a qualified teacher and works as part of the College cross disciplinary AAC team which is made up of educationalists, technologists, speech and language therapists, physiotherapists and occupational therapists who together integrate customised computer access and communication solutions for students with a wide range of disabilities and or learning difficulties.
Beaumont College is nationally recognised by BECTA and JISC as having an ‘exemplar ILT strategy’ and is a member of the Technology Exemplar Network as a ‘participating provider’.
Rohan has worked at Beaumont College for over eight years, the last four years of which as a senior manager and leader of the Technology Department. Rohan holds a joint honors first degree in Anthropology and IT, and has since done a variety of technical courses in both mainstream and specialist areas. Rohan holds a post compulsory PGCE (Post Graduate Certificate in Education) and does carry out some teaching and staff training although his primary role is as a service manager. Rohan has taught as an associate tutor on a University of Cumbria foundation degree program in the area of special access information technology.
Rohan is currently working on a number of projects that bridge technology and disability, these include:
The Scope / BT Wheeltop Project – an initiative to integrate and provide customised communication and / or accessible computer systems based on ‘off the shelf’ equipment to both students and the college and at local feeder schools as part of an outreach service. This has recently been extended to a Scope School in the South East of England.
The ‘Mobility Bridge’ project in collaboration with Lancaster University, The University of Central Lancashire, a local SME and other associate partners to develop a novel special access interface and accessible mobile phone software ‘bridge’ to allow persons with dexterity or cognition disablements to use a mobile telephone as independently as possible.

Qualifications

BA (Hons) Anthropology and Informatics University of Wales, Lampeter (1999)
PGCE (Post Compulsory) University of Central Lancashire (2006)

John Sewell

John Sewell is an engineer and teacher who worked in a specialist College for nearly 20 years trying to solve the problems that individual students with disability had with all aspects of their life and increasingly with accessing the digital world.  He set up and ran the Karten centre at the National Star College. John now works for TechDis as their Senior Advisor with responsibility for Specialist Colleges, implementing the LSC programme of funding to improve the take-up of technology in Specialist Colleges. He is part of the team trying to improve access for all learners and promoting the importance of accessibility across the whole learning population.

Ceri Hibbert

Ceri’s career started as a Scientific Programmer with ICL in Nairobi, but she then entered teaching and taught Maths and IT in a variety of schools in the UK and Kenya. A move to the Civil Service – HMSO – saw a range of roles from programmer to technical assurance to Quality Manager to Head of Marketing. Following the privatization of HMSO Ceri joined City College Norwich as an IT Lecturer and left to join Treloar College as Assistant Principal in 2000. Ceri left Treloars to join the Karten Network in July 2008.

INSPIRING ACHIEVEMENT – SUCCESS AND THE KARTEN NETWORK

13th October 2009

Edgbaston Cricket Ground, Birmingham

10:00 Welcome and opening of the conference: Dr Graham Jowett, Chair of the Network
10:15 Keynote address: Inspiration for Success, Rachel Morris
10:45 Panel discussion: Running successful Social Enterprises

• Michael Walker, Orchardville Society
• Paul Hambling, Enham
• Andrew Fellows, BASE

11:30 Refreshments
11:45 Karten Network Awards
12:45 AGM
13:15 Lunch
14:30 Panel discussion: Enabling safety and security when using new technologies

• John Sewell, TechDis
• Rohan Slaughter, Beaumont College
• Kate Gascoyne, HFT

15:15 Launch of website, Ceri Hibbert
15:45 Close