The population of children and young people with intellectual and developmental disabilities is growing with many more living with complex multi-morbidities. Due to their complexity of need children and young people with complex intellectual and developmental disabilities require access to practitioners across education, healthcare and social care who have a shared knowledge of their complex needs and the shared interventions and approaches necessary to meet them in the future. This is important as no single profession possess this knowledge and skills at the moment. This project therefore aims to develop a shared on-line learning module focusing on the policy, research and best practice in meeting the education, health and social work needs of these children and young people. The objectives of the project are to scope and critically analyse policy, research and best practice evidence from national;European and international sources to identify the extent of the needs of children and young people with complex intellectual and developmental disabilities; the involvement of academics from the partner universities, students and practitioners from education, health and social work services to scope out and identify the content of the shared learning module to ensure that it meets expectations and future service needs. The project will work with technologists to design and build the shared module content and assessment and pilot and test the effectiveness; the collaborations between the partner universities in the on-going delivery of the shared module with students from education, nursing and social work. An iterative methodology will be used that involves literature identification and analysis, workshops and interactive sessions between academics, students and practitioners to identify future needs, best practice and module content and assessment, design and piloting of the learning module and implementation of the learning module across the five partner universities with cohorts of students from education, nursing and social work supported by academics . Student involvement will be through participation in an Erasmus Intensive programme. It is anticipated that the results will set out the evidence of the range of needs of children and young people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their complexity of needs that will inform the content of the shared learning module that will be delivered collaboratively by the five partner universities as part of a longer term work programme focusing on further shared learning modules, publications and research.
The population of children and young people with complex intellectual and developmental disabilities is increasing and these people will require high level of care and support across different services providers including education, health and social care services. This population and their families are frequent users of health care services, social care services and are challenging to the education system. Due to the changing nature and increasing complexity of the needs of children and young people with complex intellectual and developmental disabilities, service provision requires a high level of collaboration between the different organisations and professionals.It is important that practitioners in education, health and social care collaborate in shared learning of skills and knowledge required to meet the needs of these children and their families. This project was interested in looking at how the needs of children and young people with complex intellectual and developmental needs can be met in an inter-disciplinary/ inter-professional approach. An important starting point in developing this collaboration of practices and knowledge sharing is at the pre-service level. In this regard, the project aimed at developing knowledge , competencies in working with children and young people with complex intellectual and developmental disabilities using an interdisciplinary/inter-professional approach. The latter taps into the different disciplines collective knowledge, skills and values that led to the development of an innovative inter-disciplinary course curriculum delivering three intensive learning programme to university students of the five participating countries. The overarching aim was to prepare future professionals to effectively provide services to these children with complex intellectual and developmental disabilities in an inter-professional collaborative manner. The five participating universities consited of three disciplines/professional groups namely school teachers, social educators and nurses. Teacher education was represented by Stockholm University and the University of Oradea , Social Education by The Oslo-Akerhus University College and the Learning Disability Nurse Education by the Universities of Hertfordshire and Edinburgh-Napier Unoversity.The Stockholm University was the coordinating partner. The team carried out a number of teaching and learning activities to meet the goals of the project. This also meant bringing together ten students from each university for a period of ten days to attend an intensive course with focussed on an inter-professional approach of working with children and young people with complex intellectual and developmental needs. The project also carried out different activities from policy review, literature seach, timetabling of learning & teaching contents, accomadation, meetings, study visits, and video filming for the development of a face to face course curriculum as well as materials/website for an online course. The implementation of the project had successfully delivered three intensive learning programmes involving the participation of 140 students from five participating universities. The main output included the development and a face to face delivery of a course curriculum on "An interdisciplinary approach to working with children and young people with complex intellectual and developmental disabilities" and a distance learning course curriculum to be delivered through an online course site. The intended outcome of the project are as follow: 1. To enhance the knowledge, competence and set of skills in pre-service training at the university level for students who in the future will provide services to these children. 2. To enhance competence development for the teachers and practitioners who participated in the project. 3. To improve the quality of services provided and some of the students who attended the intensive programme especially the first and second year are working together and have acknowledged the positive impact participation in the intensive programme has had on their practice. 4. To ensure that the long term benefits of the project leads to meaningful improvements on the quality of service and support provided to children and young people with disabilities and their families. 5.To foster strategic partnership for teachers who have participated in the project and students who attended the course as professionals of the future and the continuous development of knowledge through partnership between the different universities.