This document discusses research on informal learning in self-organized social care networks in the UK. It provides examples of four types of networks that have emerged: 1) Friendship meetups that facilitate socializing and mutual support, 2) A "Good Neighbors" network that provides local support and activities, 3) A bookshop project that offers meaningful occupation and skills development, and 4) A disabled people's alliance that offers peer support and advocacy training. The research found that these networks foster informal, lifelong learning through peer-to-peer support and collective engagement to meet social care needs in the absence of formal state support.

1. Informal learning in
self-build networks
Melanie Nind, University of Southampton
With Andrew Power, Andy Coverdale, Ed Hall, Hannah
MacPherson, Alex Kaley
NNDR, Copenhagen, May 2019
M.A.Nind@soton.ac.uk @m_nind #SelfBuildSocialCare
https://selfbuildsocialcare.wordpress.com/

2. Key ideas
• State-provided social care in the UK is in decline
due to personalisation policy and austerity
• People with learning disabilities & their
families/allies are creating new initiatives
• This is ‘self-build’ social care with spaces for
informal learning

3. Key questions
1. So what happens in the everyday lives of people cast
adrift in a new landscape of social care?
2. How are people reclaiming, reimagining and
experiencing support and how is this fostering
informal, community and lifelong learning?
3. What kinds of ‘self-build’ network initiatives are
emerging and how might we support them?
4. How are new networks reshaping how we think about
the spaces and meaning of social care, lifelong
learning and welfare?

4. Research design & methods
• Community-based ethnographic case
studies in 4 areas of England &
Scotland
• Close working with local advisory
groups to ensure accessible research
methods & local relevance
• Interviews, observations, activities &
focus groups
• Formative workshops for feedback/co-
analysis
• Co-production of resource packs, web
app, & short films

5. Self-build learning networks
• Exploring self-build networks as informal spaces of learning
• Not just the learning of individuals within a community;
collective learning by a group of people that is continuous and
transforming (Falk & Harrison 1998)
• Locating lifelong learning in social participation and dialogue
(Coffield 1999)
• Informal shoulder-to-shoulder learning by people with
learning disabilities is under-estimated & under-researched
(Nind 2016)
• ‘value creation’ (Wenger et al. 2011) when networks or
communities foster social learning through sharing
information and experiences, learning from and helping each
other with challenges.

7. Friendship Meetups
• Facilitating friendship and social meetups
• Nestled within a self-advocacy group, largely user-led
with a management committee
• Fostering social learning through providing new
opportunities to manage the group, support others at
events, travel sharing and learning, use of social media
• ‘If we’ve got problems at friendship meetups I’d help
those two out as well. Help each other out if we’ve got
any problems.’
Model of self-advocates helping
each other & learning as they go

8. Good Neighbours
• A network facilitating support & help with tenancies
and being part of the community
• 'if someone has a problem, or is worried about
something then they would talk to the network'
• Utilising ‘paid neighbours’ idea of community living
workers who live in the area and put on meetings &
activities
• Enabling progress from member to associate member
status to allow the networking to continue but with
less support when it’s no longer needed
Model of sustainable local support,
reciprocity and peers as assets

9. A new member says that her support from her Good Neighbour
worker 'has been fantastic .... it's already made such a difference to my
life ... helps me to get to places I couldn't go before, I went to a panto
on Saturday with the network, I've never been to a panto before, and
this Saturday I'm going to the quality street meeting' (for all network
members to come together and talk about issues, they often get guest
speakers come in to talk) 'Everyone is really nice … it's been great to
get out and meeting new people'

10. Book Shop Project
• Pop-up second hand bookshop facilitating meaningful occupation
and learning of social and vocational skills
• Community development worker-led rather than user-led but
person-centred
• 3 volunteers at a time ‘get the opportunity to work together [and …]
to do all the tasks that are involved’
• ‘first of all I came here to meet new people … I didn’t have the
confidence for speaking to other people. This place gave me
confidence to speak to other people. So now I’ve got the confidence
and now I’ve got my skills back I had when I used to work when I
was younger ... So that got my skills back and now I’ve got my
confidence back, I’m more confident in what I’m doing now’
Model of mutual support & confidence-building
in authentic retail setting; voluntary work & training

11. Disabled People’s Alliance
• Large disabled people’s organisation providing free accessible
learning and training programmes & events for disabled people
• Mix of informal & certificated learning, mostly ‘about building
people's kind of capacity and their confidence and connections with
other disabled people, the peer support element is a huge part’; ‘a
big part of what we do is around voice, and is about building
people's capacity, skills and confidence [… to] talk to people about
what they think needs doing to change in a whole range of areas
from accessible housing, to transport, to employment’
• People using personal budgets for care, but loss of day centres
means ‘loss of social networks’, ‘of sense of kind of belonging &
group activity’; ‘people don't necessarily want to access things on
their own’
Model of peer support & collective engagement

12. Transitional Day Centre
• Fostering continuity of people and place, but
changing the organizational management and
becoming more flexible in what they offer
• Facilitated by former day centre staff
• Learning to form a new community and to share
some of the power
• Many missed opportunities for informal learning
Model of social enterprise/
day centre plus

13. Dynamics of peer-to-peer learning
Competition
‘Yeah, because I recently noticed once you do something
new, someone else will be watching you and they’ll be
thinking, oh, I might like to do that. So, you’re influencing
others as much as you’re building up on yourself, yeah.’
Self-directed learning
Elaine: It scares the hell out of me, thinking about it now,
but I’m sure I can do it
Interviewer: And is this something which has been discussed
within the organisation?
Elaine: No. I personally want to do it

14. Dynamics of peer-to -peer learning
Community
‘[Community centres & organizations] will provide, you know, services,
events and so on that adults with learning disabilities will be
encouraged to access, but if they don't feel connected to that
community and don't really feel connected to other, you know, adults in
that community, it doesn’t really matter, you know, whether that
service is good or not, or accessible’
Ongoing care
‘Because actually, when we go home from here, the social workers and
professionals think it’s bed, it’s switch off time. But actually, when
we’re out with our friends and people we work with, we never switch
off, there’s always somebody down the road that needs help.’
Self advocacy
‘Just learning different things, just doing it together’

15. Themes
• Sometimes displaced people from former day centres
(including staff) found each other & built something
new
• Reciprocal peer-to-peer learning didn’t mean no staff
involvement
• Community learning (by a group of people that is
continuous and transforming) – took years to develop
• Some learning was individual and self-directed, some
more communal
• Networks were needs-based not just asset-based
• Personal connections needed to be built, self-advocacy
skills were critical to initiating & sustaining networks

16. Issues arising
• Powerlessness as people’s parents age and moves are forced, day
centres close and contact with friends is lost
• Training offered is often not in what matters most to people - how
to make friends/get along, deal with everyday challenges
• Little opportunity for self-directed learning of knowledge rather
than skills
• Opportunities for learning were there - in hanging out together,
using social media, accessing networks and groups – but under-used
• Tension between continuity & progression (sometimes helped by
new roles e.g. moving from trainee to volunteer, or member to
associate member, or member to management committee)
• Sometimes learning was transformative, but individuals often had
little personal of awareness and ownership of their own learning