We are a small team of Support Workers based in Lambeth, UK who care for an individual with Autism, learning difficulties and complex communication, and have been doing so for the past 17 years. Our main goal is to ensure our client receives adequate day to day support to maintain wellbeing and live out a fulfilling life by providing opportunities to develop as a person and connect with communities. The ultimate goal is to enable our client to live a more independent life. If we get a great idea from our experience, our ethos is to share it with others in order to help them too.
Activity Calendar App
Families or organisations with people in their care with learning disabilities / autism will use a visual symbol calendar which communicates to the individual what activities they will participate in that week, also which carer/support worker is supporting them and what form of transport they will take. It can be essential for anyone with learning difficulties to have this communicated non verbally. It’s currently all mainly paper based and symbols are printed out, laminated, velcro attached, each time a new activity or other element is introduced. This approach is very inefficient to maintain and cumbersome to locate the correct symbols in a folder full of hundreds more and is not as engaging as it could be.
We therefore would like to digitise this into a desktop app, which eliminates the upkeep of paper symbols, provides a rich interface for carers/support workers and the individual to interact with and modernises what we feel is an outdated approach. Its already been designed and we now require a developer to bring it to life.
This application, once built, will be primarily tested on our client, and will then be available for free to all families and organisations across the UK to use too. It’s purposely kept simple so that anyone can pick up and manage it and / pull in their own symbols library. It will also bring about sustainable benefits as we remove the need to print symbols.
Time frame
Development, testing and launch of this project to be completed within 5 weeks
Preferred technology, platform & technical constraints
More information on the application
This has been designed with simplicity in mind and isn’t a dedicated calendar app, and more of an image drag n drop experience. It only requires two views; ‘this week’ and ‘next week’, where symbols can be dragged onto and placed anywhere on the screen (no restrictions).
Full designs and assets will be provided along with a briefing, specification document / ongoing guidance and a weekly catch up. Please see the attachment for a design preview.
An indication of skills, experience, and availability you expect from the ideal volunteer
Experience with developing Windows UWP apps and can provide examples of work demonstrating the core functionality mentioned above, or equivalent skills
Strong communication skills
Can work remotely and reachable during UK daytime hours
Available to work on this with completion in mind over the next 4 weeks
A passion for helping individuals in need
Willing to work as a team, and proactive in their work ethic
Supporting you
We are committed to this project and will be assisting you throughout. Your main point of contact is Jack who has prior experience as a Digital Project Manager. He will be on hand to brief this project, assist with any questions, provide design assets and help out with QA testing. You will join him for a weekly catchup to touch base and review progress.
We are also developing a Meal Planner App too if you are interested in that also.
© donate:code 2020
