Análisis prospectivo de cadenas productivas

One of the important differences between school and college was that college was not full-time, five days a week. The closer links between the schools and colleges in the hubs meant that students and their parents were made aware of this in advance, during transition planning reviews and college visits. Parents and young people were encouraged to plan constructive ways to use this time for, for example, volunteering or work experience. Some school leads mentioned that they found preparing

students with autism for this increase in unstructured time was difficult within the school environment.

Several of the Cohort 1 young people interviewed mentioned that they had more free time to fill during the week than they were used to at school. Some enjoyed the

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opportunity for a lie in on their ‘day off’ from college: others did not like the break in their weekday routine. For this reason, Kevin, at College 3, would have preferred a Friday as his day off, rather than a Tuesday, so that he could have had a routine of three days not at college, followed by four days at college.

During college days, there was also unstructured time during lunch and break times. These times were when the students interviewed tended to use the autism- specific quieter communal areas. For example, In College 1, Paul said that he liked to go to the Hub at lunchtime to play on his laptop but he also bought food from the canteen to eat in the Hub. John also reported that, ‘we all go to the Hub and eat our food there. It’s a hangout area.’ In College 2, also, Kayleigh reported that she enjoyed using the centre’s, ‘common room with games’.

Other students, for example, Helen at College 2, used mainstream college facilities, such as the college library, as a quiet place to go at lunch and break times, or, like Trevor and his friends in College 3, used the main canteen or went off-site to visit local shops to buy food at lunchtimes. These young men enjoyed the greater freedom they had at college compared to school. Another young man at the same college, Kevin, was in a group of learners who were not allowed to go off-site for safety reasons. Kevin was not very happy about that. However, he described spending lunchtimes as follows, illustrating a nice mix of use of mainstream and autism-specific facilities:

‘We buy stuff in the shop at college and then we eat it sitting in a café-related area or we go outside or sit in the Gateway. […] The Gateway is a little bit of the college especially for autism children and the staff there are friendlier than the staff outside of the Gateway.’

(Kevin, College 2)

Sukisha, at College 4, reported, ‘liking my own space’. At lunchtimes, she went by herself to a small coffee shop within the mainstream entrance area to achieve this.

In College 2, learning from the previous year of piloting individualised timetables had introduced a more structured start to the day in time for Cohort 1 students to benefit. Instead of ‘milling around’ at the start of the day, each learner in the purpose- built centre went to a base room where his or her one-to-one learning assistant would go through the individual’s visual timetable or ‘now and next’ boards and/or take the opportunity to do alerting or calming activities as necessary.

98 7.4 Using ‘mainstream’ college facilities

Across the hubs, it was apparent that college staff worked to ensure that the learners with autism were not marooned in autism-specific areas but included into college life, accessing mainstream college facilities, such as the library, cafes, the canteen, and sports facilities. There was evidence from interviews with college staff and with the young people from Cohort 1 that such facilities were routinely accessed. College staff knew that the students with autism might need to access these facilities in small burst of, say, 15 to 20 minutes at first, and that the attitudes of others towards them also needed to be addressed; for example, perceptions that these learners could be, ‘too noisy’. To support inclusion, the autism-specific ‘Gateway’ in College 3 was deliberately placed to look over the mainstream atrium area where the main student refectory was situated. In this way, as the college lead explained, students with autism could see what that looked like, ‘without experiencing the nose and the open feeling’, and could decide, in their own time, to take the next step of going downstairs to access it.

The College 1 lead also reported that staff encouraged learners with autism to leave the haven of their own ‘Hub’ area to use the main canteen at least one day a week. To support this, they were able to access the canteen at times when it was less busy.

None of the Cohort 1 students interviewed reported making use of sports facilities or of being part of any mainstream clubs at college. In part, as mentioned in Section 7.1 above, this was to do with travel arrangements but perhaps this is an area where inclusion into mainstream college life could be further supported. It may also be an area of inclusion into college life that will develop organically, once the Cohort 1 learners have been at college for longer.