Learning for Life’s ‘Respectful Relationships’ series is both co-presented and co-produced with the Down’s syndrome community. This means our fantastic friends at Down’s Syndrome Scotland had input in both the content of the videos, and helped to present, alongside Kirsty and Varshali, DSS team members.
We’re so proud of this series and the representation it provides for our community.
But how do we create a series like this? A lot of work goes on behind the scenes, with our internal team and our experts and volunteers. Let’s take you through it, start to finish.
Identifying a Problem
While we scaffold our work around the curriculum, our personal experiences living within the community, as well as our partnerships, enable us to understand specific problems we can support our young people with.
These are often those that go beyond the curriculum, or sit just outside it, but equally need teaching. In Respectful Relationships, this included strategies around starting a romantic relationship and dealing with obsessive feelings or behaviours. Things that are particularly relevant and problematic for our young people.
Planning
Several months worth of planning go into each project that we make. To start, this involves researching, gathering our experts, talking to our community, and building a plan of what needs to be covered.
Once all of these puzzle pieces are in place, we work with our experts (like Kirsty and Varshali - pictured left with Jo and Laura) to write the scripts and plan our printable resources. In this process we will meet up in person - so we were lucky enough to go to (very cold!) Edinburgh to meet up with Kirsty and Varshali for the Respectful Relationships series.
Meet our Experts
Hear from Varshali Swadi, Professional Engagement Lead at Down’s Syndrome Scotland, about why they partnered with us to create the Respectful Relationships series.
Filming
Joining everyone together for the filming is definitely our favourite part. The incredible team at MatchBox Motion create the high-quality videos and graphics that you see in this series.
Filming usually occurs over two or three days, depending on the content and set up. Our ‘classroom sessions’ in Respectful Relationships where our young people discussed the concepts were brand new to this series and seemed to require endless cameras.
Meet our Young People
Without our friends at Down’s Syndrome Scotland, we would have missed out on some really fantastic contributions from our community. Watch Kirsty chat to Alexandra, Gregor, Emilia, Cameron, and Aiden, all about their experience filming with us.
Each new series we create is a labour of love, for us at Learn and Thrive and all of the experts, videographers, and young people involved.
Our work is needed to help our community thrive. And to help us provide this in it’s best form, we:
Gain insight directly from the community and their educators and supporters
Are scaffolded by the curriculum, meaning learners are getting support additionally to what they would receive in school, tailored to their learning profile
Include young people who represent our community as much as possible
Ensure safeguarding is a thread through all of our planning and production
If you’d like to support our future series, and ultimately impact the provision of specialist education to thousands across the UK, please consider donating to our current projects.
Launch
After a few months of editing, reviewing, and making resources, we’re finally ready to launch! The series goes live in the Learning for Life project, and all our members can view the videos and download resources as they like. Now, this series, which started as an idea almost a year before, is available to thousands of parents, educators, and supporters of teenagers and young adults with moderate learning difficulties, totally free!
Feedback & Impact
We love getting feedback from our community, sharing their thoughts on each new series. It’s also crucial for us to use in improving on future content and providing evidence to funders about the impact our work has on our community.
Our expert panels, alongside our new youth panels, mean we know where to go next and how to make things even better!
“Kirsty is an amazing presenter and the topics are so relevant and well laid out”
Starting a romantic relationship
See for yourself…
Take a look - here’s just one of the videos we produced in our Respectful Relationships series, called ‘Starting a Romantic Relationship’.
Don’t forget that access to this video, and almost a hundred others, you can sign up to the Learning for Life project for FREE!