Move On Up is a National Lottery Community Fund funded project that will provide early support to 290 young people with learning disabilities and autistic young people in Leeds and Bradford leaving school, college and young people’s services, empowering them to transition successfully to adult community services. The project will run until the end of April 2025.
The project has four strands:
The Move On Up team is made up of Projects Manager, Hannah, and Projects Assistant, Róisín, who are working with Fran, our Chief Executive Officer, and Bronia, our Programmes Manager to bring the project to life!
What we’ve been up to recently…
Transition Workshops
We are excited to start the fortnightly transition workshops in January 2022! In the workshops, we will be developing skills such as team working, using your voice and decision making, and will work to build participants’ confidence and sense of independence, all using the Purple Patch Approach. Some activities we have planned are: a life size board game, making lava lamps, exploring different countries through sensory objects and a team challenge to build some Lego bridges!
In preparation for the start of our transition workshops, we have been in to Leeds City College and Bradford College to meet some of the groups we will be working with this year. In this first meeting, we had a lot of fun creating a huge time machine together and travelling to the future!
The Move On Up Network
In the transition workshops, participants will also be learning about lots of different organisations who work with adults with learning disabilities and autistic adults and finding out about the different activities and services they offer. We have been building up a Move On Up network of organisations in Yorkshire, mainly focussed around Leeds and Bradford, who offer an amazing arrangement of activities to suit different interests. There’s everything ranging from art and drama groups, sports teams and horticulture, to social groups, activities building up life skills and more!
We are excited to have over 40 organisations in our network so far – if you are an organisation that offers a service or activity for people with learning disabilities and autistic people and would like to be part of the Move On Up network, contact Hannah: hannah@purplepatcharts.org for more information.
Buddy Scheme
We have also taken the first steps to creating our Buddy Scheme, which we will first pilot at Purple Patch Arts, before reaching out to our Move On Up network. The Purple Patch Lifelong Learning Programmes have been helping us to shape our Buddy Scheme; during Kindness Week, our participants thought about how they might help someone new and how someone might feel going somewhere new for the first time. They also decided on their kindness commitments!
Some of our Purple Patch Kindness Commitments include:
Make everyone feel welcome, fandabidosi, and always say hello
Be inclusive
To celebrate all the group!
Be patient
By welcoming and accommodating everyone – because we are fabulous!
By consulting with our participants, we can make sure our buddy training is the best it can be, as they are the experts in what it is like to come to Purple Patch for the first time!
Our New Logo!
Finally, you may have noticed our wonderful Move On Up logo… This was designed by Beth and we hope you love it as much as we do!
Keep checking back to hear more about our Move On Up project! If you would like to know more about Move On Up, please contact Hannah: hannah@purplepatcharts.org for a chat!
