Natural Ability is a social enterprise aimed at providing supported living accommodation and farming opportunities for people with learning disabilities. The initiative promotes empowerment through choice, community involvement, and personal autonomy, while collaborating with social care and education stakeholders to reduce double funding. The project is interested in applying for future funding through the North East JIP's provider development fund to further enhance its services.

1. [ Natural Ability 4 words max) Natural Ability is a unique social enterprise which will provide shared supported living accommodation and farming; and excellent, enabling care, so that people with learning disabilities can live safely, learning through challenge and well-managed risk, doing meaningful work, having fun, and gaining personal autonomy.

2. The big picture

3. Features, needs and efficiencies Features Excellent care Lifelong learning for disabled and non-disabled people alongside each other Income from social enterprises supplements funding from personal budgets Efficiencies created Provides what learning disabled people and their families want Working in partnership with social care, education, voluntary and business agencies Reducing “double funding” Needs met: Increases the range of choices of supported living options for people with learning disabilities Gives learning disabled people the chance to live and work with animals/ in agriculture Creates opportunities for learning disabled people to be a real part of a farming community

4. Measures of success Learning disabled people will feel empowered and have greater choice about where and how they live Learning disabled people will play an active part in their local community Disabled people and their families/carers will benefit from short break/holiday provision which meets their needs

5. Support Business Manager Specialist Conservation Architect/planning advice Early opportunity to support disabled people to use Personal Budgets

6. I am willing to attend the Festival of Ideas on 12 th November to talk about this project and to be signed up to the Innovation Exchange website to support this knowledge sharing after the event. I do understand that this event is the launch of the North East JIP’s Provider Development Fund and I am interested in the possibility of applying to this Fund in the future I do understand that this Fund will only support projects that involve collaboration between at least two providers of social care services and that funded projects will be part of an evaluation process to include both research interviews and knowledge sharing events. Your commitments