Day opportunities for people with a learning disability

This project brings together two partners from different areas of England: Persona, which offers day opportunities for people with learning disabilities in Bury, Greater Manchester, and the Royal Borough of Greenwich, which provides them in its south London borough.

Alongside IMPACT, Persona plans to reconfigure its day opportunities around the aspirations of people with learning disabilities, building on a review by NDTi. In Greenwich, the day opportunities team wants to share power with the community to improve the support people draw on from a multi-use building (the hub) and various community activities (the spokes). The council established this ‘hub and spoke’ model following a consultation process in 2022.

Oliver Smithson

Senior Strategic Improvement Coach, University of Sheffield

IMPACT offered a unique
opportunity to combine my experience of service improvement with my desire to make a difference in social care, particularly for adults with learning
disabilities. My background is in the charity sector. I joined IMPACT from the
Health Foundation, where I led grant funding and strategy work on health and social care service innovation. I also chair a garden charity in London that
supports adults with learning disabilities. My interest in social care formed while working as a support worker at the start of my career.