Supported
Learning Project for Mothers with Learning Difficulties
(Grantholders:
Tim Booth, Wendy Booth, Sheffield Women's Cultural Club; Funded
by the Department for Education and Employment)
This project was
conducted in partnership with Sheffield
Women's Cultural Club and financed by the DfEE's Adult and Community Learning Fund. It
ran for two years from September 1999 through to August 2001.
Aims
The project offered
personal support and development in self-advocacy to mothers
with learning difficulties through a semi-structured programme
of learning opportunities and activities designed to:
- enable mothers
by providing instruction in new skills
- empower mothers
by supporting them in making decisions and speaking up for themselves
- enhance mothers'
self-esteem by providing them with opportunities to develop and
demonstrate their competence
- extend mothers'
social networks
in order to support
them in their parenting and in meeting the needs of their children.
Methods
The project:
- ran a weekly learning
support group for mothers.
- provided a step
onto the ladder of learning through the provision of day and
evening courses and activities run by Sheffield Women's Cultural
Club.
- provided guidance
and support in accessing educational courses.
- facilitated mothers'
involvement in voluntary and community organisations in Sheffield.
- arranged customised
courses designed around the particular needs and interests of
mothers.
The project built
on good practice in the continuing education of adults with learning
difficulties. In particular, it followed:
- A person-centred
approach based on negotiated learning where the mothers made
their own decisions about what they learned and how.
- An adult approach
which recognised and respected people's prior learning and the
life skills they brought with them.
- A grounded approach
using real-life situations that involved the mothers in developing
their self-advocacy skills by addressing issues arising in their
own lives.
- A flexible approach
which allowed mothers to participate in the project on their
own terms and to vary their involvement in line with changes
in their circumstances and their own personal development.
- An inclusive approach
that made use where possible of non-segregated learning opportunities
that brought mothers into contact with other people.
Mothers with learning
difficulties are known to be 'hard-to-reach', suspicious of professionals
and their kind, reluctant to join in organised activities, erratic
in their attendance and quick to drop out.
The reasons for
this reticence are rooted in their lives and their experience
of exclusion.
The project used
the lessons from the self-help movement in overcoming mothers'
lack of confidence and helping them to forge a positive identity
for themselves within the group. A key way of achieving this
objective is ensuring that people feel valued for what they are.
The support group provided this kind of validation, especially
through the development of mutually supportive relationships
between the mothers themselves that extended beyond the group
into their lives in the community.
The driving purpose
of the project was self-advocacy: people learning to take greater
control over their own lives (particularly, in this case, mothers
learning to handle their parental responsibilities). Self-advocacy
is about people working together to find their own voice, speak
up for themselves, recognise their strengths, make their own
decisions and, in the case of project mothers, identify their
own learning needs as parents. Mentoring relationships were instrumental
in the pursuit of this end. The idea of mothers supporting mothers
was a core feature the project.
Evaluation
Monitoring and evaluation
were built into the project in order to establish what worked
and what did not work for these 'hard-to-help' mothers, and to
assess the process and outcomes of the project.
This aspect of the
project involved systematic and continuous case recording; structured
observation; formative assessments of mothers' progress; summative
assessment of learning outcomes; interviews with practitioner
and other learning providers involved with the project. The mothers
themselves were involved as partners in the formative and summative
assessments.
This process of
monitoring and evaluation was a continuous feature of the project
designed to ensure that it was driven by the progress of mothers.
Learning to be a
mum is an important step towards 'active citizenship'. The project
has shown how mothers can be supported in making room in their
lives for such new learning in ways that fit with their personal
goals and their family's needs.
 Click here for a downloadable pdf version of the final project
report, 'Self-advocacy and Supported Learning for Mothers with Learning
Difficulties'
Next Steps
The Supported Learning
Project (SLP) concluded at the end of August 2001 when its funding
from the DfEE ceased. In line with our agreed exit strategy,
we had already been working to mainstream the project by exploring
alternative sources of follow-on funding that would secure both
continuity of support for the mothers involved and continuity
of employment for the workers while still holding to the values
and working methods on which it had been based. We were delighted
when a collaborative bid with Circles Network for Department
of Health (Section 64) funding was successful, enabling a seamless
transfer of responsibility for the project and guaranteeing its
future for at least the next three years.
Circles Network is a national voluntary
organisation with an educational objective of building inclusive
communities, primarily through the setting up of circles
of support.
Circles Network
also runs a range of special projects,
including the Crowley
House project for parents with learning difficulties.
The new project
- to be known as the Supported Parenting Project - will build
on and develop the work of the SLP by complementing the existing
mothers-only programme with a new support network and learning
programme specifically for couples. A deliberate aim is to engage
successfully with the men in these families. The project will:
(1) use an advocacy-based approach to (2) involve couples where
one or both partners have learning difficulties in (3) a support
network offering (4) opportunities for developing confidence
and competence in parenting based on (5) a structured programme
of activities (6) geared to their own learning needs.
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