Paces School for Conductive Education is at the heart  of a fully
inclusive community centre that has grown up around the school. We
support individuals with any disability through education, advice and
job opportunities, and are also committed to supporting and helping the
families as well.

We have constructed the Life Maps for families to map and share their
experiences. Life Maps can be best described by one of the founders of
Paces, himself a parent of a young woman suffering with CP.

The experience of being either (a) a parent of a child with a
disability inter-reacting with statutory agencies or (b) a young
teenager with a disability is almost impossible to describe to people,
including professionals, who have no direct personal experience. To
that end, we have created Life Maps. The maps themselves? Imagine a
huge roll of paper, spread out and tacked to a wall. On the paper, at
intervals are questions acting as prompts; each respondent takes
       a pen and draws the own line connecting up their answers, adding
short              comments from their own experience. Mapping is like
action research;              collecting the real life experiences of
real people. Your participation on this web based Life Maps will allow
us to have an impact on policy makers and health care professionals.
Your responses will be combined with those of others who are going
through similar experiences, creating an realistic overall picture of
process of raising a child with special abilities. Thank you for your
interest and participation.

Although a project in progress with a lot of improvements needed, Life
Maps is active and we would like to invite concerned families to visit,
contribute and pass on any comments or making it a more effective and
useful tool - After all, it is the parents who will be the power behind
the project reaching its hoped for maturity.

If you feel there are families or organisations who would be interested
in looking at this site, we would be grateful if you could pass this
information on. Life Maps can be accessed at:


http://www.disconlineuk.info/lifemaps.htm

Thank you very much

Allan Johns
Paces ICT