Getting a Life

Find out about the Getting a Life project and how it is ensuring young people with learning disabilities can more easily get a job and achieve full lives

What are the aims of the Getting a Life project?

The project seeks to:

identify and demonstrate good practice in enabling young people with learning disabilities to get paid employment and have full adult lives when they leave education
explore how to bring together assessment and funding streams from different national and local policy areas
inform government about what works and what needs to be changed at a policy level
develop a learning community to gather and share good practice.

How does the Getting a Life project work?

There are twelve Getting a Life demonstration sites. Each site works with around 30 young people who have learning disabilities, including many with severe learning disabilities.

These sites work with and across several local delivery agencies, including:

Adult Social Services
Children’s Services
Young People’s Learning Agency
Schools
Further Education Colleges
Supported employment.

Each demonstration site has a project team that includes young people and their families alongside senior decision makers from schools, colleges, children and adult social services.

Where are the demonstration sites?

The 12 core sites are:

Herefordshire
Kent
Lincolnshire
Manchester
Medway
Norfolk
North East Lincolnshire
North Tyneside
Oldham
Richmond Upon Thames
Somerset
Torbay.

There are also associated sites in a number of regions.

Each of these sites has secured senior commitment from key local delivery services.

How is the programme run?

Getting a Life is a three-year cross-government programme jointly funded by a number of government departments:

Office for Disability Issues (ODI)
Department for Work and Pensions
Department of Health
Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
Department for Education.

Each organisation made a financial commitment for the three-year life-span of the project, which began in March 2008. No additional funding has been provided for services in the pilot sites.

Getting a Life: achievements so far

The project has developed and published a pathway to paid work. This pathway is based on the experience of young people, families and local project teams. It shows what needs to happen at each stage of transition between the ages of 14 and 25 so that young people can get jobs and live full lives after they leave school or college.

Young people in the 12 sites are starting to find real jobs through various pathways to employment including work experience and Saturday and holiday jobs.

A number of regions are now implementing the Getting a Life approach locally.

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Page last reviewed: 04 November 2010