Getting A Life
A project for young people with severe learning disabilities, built on raising aspirations, changing the system and creating a clear path to paid employment.
Why this project exists
Too many young people with severe learning disabilities leave education with little idea of what work could look like for them. Expectations are often set low by services, families and employers alike, and the result is a gap between what young people can do and what they are offered.
Getting A Life starts from a simple belief: every young person deserves the chance to work for pay, to build relationships beyond their home and to make choices about their own future.
Raising aspirations
Aspiration is not a personality trait that a young person either has or lacks. It grows from experience, from seeing real roles and from being trusted with responsibility. The project works to create those experiences early and to keep them going.
That means visits to workplaces, short taster placements and conversations that focus on what a young person enjoys and how they want to contribute.
Changing the system
Routes into employment are shaped by policies, funding rules and professional habits that were not designed with young people with severe learning disabilities in mind. Getting A Life looks closely at where those systems block progress and where small changes could open doors.
The aim is not to work around the system alone but to show, with evidence from real young people, what better support looks like and to share it with the people who make decisions.
Planning around the person
Each young person has a different set of strengths, interests and support needs. Good planning starts with the individual and works outward, bringing together the young person, their family and the professionals who know them.
- Clear goals written in the young person's own words
- Steps that can be measured and revised
- Support that fades as skills and confidence grow
A clear path to paid employment
Paid work is the destination, but the path there has many stages: building confidence, learning practical skills, understanding how a workplace operates and finding an employer willing to offer a real role.
Getting A Life keeps each of these stages visible so that young people, families and staff can see how today's activity connects to a job tomorrow.
Working with employers
Employers need practical guidance on how to make a role accessible and how to support a new colleague with a learning disability. The project offers that guidance in plain language and encourages employers to see their own part in building an inclusive team.
Friendship and community
A working life is also a social life. Getting A Life values the friendships, routines and sense of belonging that come with being part of a team and a community, and treats them as central to a good life rather than an extra.
If you want to understand how the project works in practice or explore how to get involved, see how the project has developed over time.