We undertook work with two groups of adult learners, in Pilton and Sighthill in north and west Edinburgh. This workstream was called “My Health – Finding Local Support” which is referred to in the the Work-stream Report and Tutor Pack as “My Health” for short.
Health is a rich topic to explore in adult literacy groups as some adult literacy learners are interested in finding out about health conditions which affect them or their families and some may have difficulties understanding information about health and communicating with health services.
Health topics can be the foundation of useful activities for literacy learners and can be woven into learning in a variety of ways such as reading, writing and comprehension activities or as mini projects or local investigations.
As people and carers are encouraged to play a more active role in their care, and share decisions about treatments, it is important that they properly understand health services and medical conditions. To do this effectively they need to be aware of local networks and activities that offer support to keep them healthy.
We wanted to learn more about how people accessed local health support and so we designed some simple activities for adult literacy learners to use as a class topic.
Learning more about long term conditions and sources of support, proved to be a fruitful class activity. It offered opportunities to share experiences and ideas, have animated group discussions and to research aspects of personal health as part of individual learning plans.
The project was sponsored by the Self Management Programme, Long Term Conditions Unit of Scottish Government in collaboration with the Edinburgh City Literacy and Numeracy (CLAN) Health and Literacy Project and supported by the Long Term Conditions Alliance Scotland (LTCAS).
