UK -Wide AT Project Discussions

A major project is currently underway across the UK to investigate how use of assistive technology (AT) is affecting the social care, early years and children and young people’s workforce and its learning needs.

What do we mean by AT? For the purpose of the project, AT is understood as encompassing electronic aids and systems used to promote the well-being and independence of individuals. This may be anything from call alarm services, through systems for monitoring the environment or individual well-being, and right on to internet and mobile ‘smart phone’ technologies. The intention is to think about AT as it contributes to individual support, rather than categorising types of technology as important in themselves.

One focus of the project is to develop a learning strategy with a suite of knowledge and skills sets, and the writing of these is now underway. They will be significant UK-wide resources, enabling employers to invest in skills development around AT with greater confidence in the future.

The second project focus is to work with employers and others in the sector who are enthusiastic about AT and its potential to transform both people’s lives and the way support is delivered. These ‘AT Champions’ will help to shape the strategy and knowledge and skills sets, but equally importantly will have the opportunity to work with Scottish Social Services Council to raise awareness of AT amongst other employers in the wider sector.

You can get involved in many ways:

Contact me Ian Fricker ian.fricker@sssc.uk.com at the SSSC to take this further.

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Permalink Reply by Ian Fricker on December 14, 2012 at 16:32

Here is the background desk top research that informs this project.

It looks at the 4 countries of the UK in turn and thentries to pull together the various strands of Assistive Technology aiming to map current learning and development practice and inform the future direction of work in this area.

Attachments:

AT DBR Report May 12.doc, 323 KB

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Permalink Reply by Cathy Stephenson on December 14, 2012 at 22:41

Hi Ian

Whilst organisation have generally good access now to Microsoft software, many individuals do not have access to Word on their PCs would it be possible to add a PDF version of the report or an RTF (rich text format) version to encourage wider reading?

Cathy

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Permalink Reply by George Perfect on December 16, 2012 at 8:45

Hi Cathy,

I have converted the document for you and anyone else who needs a PDF format version.

For those who can't read PDFs, the Reader software is available for free from http://get.adobe.com/reader/ - you may want to skip the option to install McAfee (un-tick the box and, if you don’t already have decent anti-virus software installed use something that doesn’t consume your machine’s resources while throwing up nags to buy more useless software - something like Avast, AVG or Microsoft Defender – all of which are better … and FREE)