Project 'Clarity'

Making the Royal Borough the UK'S First "Communications Centre of Excellence"

An initiative of RBWM Day Opportunities

Project Clarity is a scheme to help people with communication difficulties integrate into wider society within the Royal Borough and gain more independence, confidence and self-esteem in managing their everyday needs.

The scheme fully supports the Community Capacity Building agenda.

Working with businesses and community service providers across the area, Project Clarity has created visual communication boards to aid expression of simple, or occasionally quite complex, words and phrases.

Project Clarity is already attracting a lot of attention within and outside the Borough. It has the potential to make the Royal Borough the UK's first community centre of excellence for communications.

Project Clarity aims specifically to build the capacity of people who have difficulty communicating in every day circumstances - eg. shopping, at the doctor/hospital, post office.

Such groups include:

• People with a learning disability
• People affected by a stroke
• The elderly
• People with dementia
• People with Huntingdon's disease
• The hearing impaired
• People who speak little or no English.

Through a series of simple, universal visual communication techniques, Project Clarity will have a significant positive impact on their participation in wider society, as well as helping them to take more responsibility for their own needs and increasing their ability to influence decisions that affect them.

The overall result for such groups will be:

• Increased ability to communicate in a wider range of social/personal/commercial situations
• Greater independence and self-confidence
• Improved engagement, involvement and integration with the community.

Links with commerce and the community

As well as the immense benefits the Project will bring to the people who will use it, local business (especially those with a Corporate Social Responsibility agenda) and other social agencies/bodies will want to buy in to the scheme, strengthening ties between the Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead and local commerce and the community.

Already, Thames Valley Police, Boots, , several NHS doctor's surgeries and a local transport company have committed to the scheme. The possibilities are as wide as there are businesses and community service providers in the Borough.

A specially designed logo, clearly displayed on their premises, will show they are 'licensees' of the scheme - a symbol of their pride and enthusiasm in being a 'communications focused organisation'.

PROJECT CLARITY - The Scheme: Simplicity itself.

Day Opportunities and their appointed partners have developed a series of communication boards for each type of business or service provider.

The boards will show simple visual stimuli (photos or graphics) to help those with communication problems make themselves understood. (See prototype example in separate pdf document.)

The customer and member of staff will use the board together, pointing to relevant images and symbols, to identify what the customer requires or wants to communicate.

Introducing the scheme into all community facilities and shops will empower people to have a voice and express their wishes and views, in circumstances where they would otherwise be excluded. This will bring them new opportunities, independence and greater integration into the community of the Royal Borough.

Communication Board Example

•   RBWM Customer Service Centre Communication Board (PDF 362KB)

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