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What are some of the key learning points from April 2015 to date and how has it influenced our thinking for  academic year 2016/17?

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What are some of the key learning points from April 2015 to date and how has it influenced our thinking for  academic year 2016/17?

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Community learning is diverse. The diversity of students who have participated in the project so far is reflected in the diversity of staff and partners involved on the project.
It is our challenge to maintain or improve this diversity during academic year 2016-17.

Staff, particularly tutors, should have empathy and understanding about what the impact of poor or fluctuating mental health means to individuals.  Many in the staff team chose to declare they had past experience of mental ill-health themselves or in their family; this motivated them to volunteer to take part in the project.

We will continue to share our experience and lessons learned about how to support students who declare a mental health difficulty with colleagues.

Targeted recruitment has a long lead-in time and needs persistence; sometimes the most unexpected partnerships work very effectively.  Do not be disheartened by knockbacks from organisations involved in delivering health services.

We will continue to widen our networks to recruit students directly and from a range of existing and new partners.

A co-production approach, which respects the student’s contribution to the learning experience, can positively influence curriculum design and the level of responsiveness and flexibility in the teaching, learning and assessment a tutor delivers.

We will capture effective tutor delivery to share with colleagues in WEA and with wider audiences for the project.

Course content focused on developing digital skills or literature and creative writing can do just as well as practical art, crafts and similar ‘hands-on’ informal learning subjects.

We will identify how tutors have contextualised delivery to the student group and how this can be usefully shared.

To meet the aspirations of students better we need to find ways to identify and support realistic progression pathways that promote mental health recovery.

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What difference has this learning made for you?
The impact recorded by some students who attended ALL courses between April and July 2016.

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What has influenced our ways of working on the ALL project?

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What has influenced our ways of working on the ALL project?

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We know learning can improve mental health and we have feedback from students that is positive about the difference learning can make to them.  Research such as that published by the Mental Health Foundation (Learning for Life, 2011) or Public Health England /UCL Institute of Health Equity (Local action on adult inequalities: adult learning services, 2014) reinforces what WEA learns from our annual Impact Survey.  This research includes specific findings related to the impact of learning on  health and wellbeing.

We use the Discovering Potential model to inform our delivery of information and advice before the course starts.  This model has been used before (e.g. NIACE Take Ten People projects) and offers a practical, jargon-free approach which can be delivered without extensive previous experience of information and advice work.

Teaching, learning and assessment takes into account the specific needs of people who declare a mental health difficulty.  This reflects practice developed over the last five or more years via projects such as Back on Track Portsmouth, Learn2Be and LSIS Mental Health pathfinders.

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What underpins WEA thinking about delivery of learning?

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What underpins WEA thinking about delivery of learning?

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The Workers' Educational Association has been working since 1904 with people who experience multiple disadvantages which may cause them to miss out on opportunities to access education.  One of our four curriculum themes is 'Health and Wellbeing' and our Approach to Education and Learning embeds ways of working that actively promote equality, resilience and critical thinking.