In the Northwest, especially Oldham we live in a vibrant and diverse community which includes people from various religious, cultural, social and ethnic backgrounds. We celebrate diversity and inclusion but unfortunately sometimes a small number of people can, as in any community, challenge diversity in a negative way. This can lead to a hate incident or a hate a crime.

A hate incident occurs when someone perceives...

This last year has flown by and we are again proud to announce the publication of our second Social Impact Report. We have built on the previous year and would like to share and celebrate what we have achieved. We continue to make an impact both locally and further afield and we would like highlight some of those achievements briefly here in this blog, for more information please have a look at the full report on o...

This month’s blog is a reflection on work commissioned by Pathways Associates CIC who requested training for Experts by Experience and Clinical Advisors involved in Care and Treatment Reviews. Care Treatment Reviews (CTR’s) have been introduced following the introduction of the Government’s Transforming Care policy. In the North West, Pathways Associates CIC have led the organisation of these reviews and have creat...

Hello!

We are communication advocates.

We work with Total Communication Services Community Interest Company (CIC). Our goal is to help people communicate and express themselves. We think being able to communicate is a basic human right. We want people to know about the Communication Bill of Rights.

MXLLS​​

This month’s blog is written by a team of Social Workers from the North West. Alison worked with one of the team, Gillian, alongside a woman with a learning disability who has a visual impairment and her family. The Social Workers in Gillian’s team had a set of images which they had created relying on clip art which on reflection were not suitable for the woman Gillian and Alison were working with. Alison, Gillian...

This month we are very proud to announce the publication of our first Social Impact report which both highlights and celebrates what we have achieved. We have been very busy over the last twelve months with many achievements and are making an impact both locally and further afield. The work we have completed, and continue to develop, is so varied that we would like to share a snapshot of it here.

1. Training courses...

Hello from Total Communication Services

We are very excited to launch our latest resource through our online store. Following the success of our FREE Image bank TC Pix which is available as a download from our website, we have created a fantastic new resource. With permission from Boardmaker we have created sets of vocabulary around certain topics which are available to download from our website at a very low cost.....

This month I thought it would be good to share an update on the success of TCPIx, our multi cultural image bank which is available FREE to download on our website under the Downloads tab.

As you may know TCPix was created with a grant from the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) and Small Good Stuff. TCPix is a library of black and white line drawings, the images are sorted into categories which...

At Total Communication Services CIC we were recently awarded a grant from Oldham Council’s Autism Way Forward board. I worked closely with Gareth who has Autism and is an advisor to Total Communication to co-produce a leaflet.

Gareth wanted to create a leaflet to help raise awareness in the local community, he wanted a leaflet that anybody from the public could pick up and it would give them information about Autis...

Back in early 2016 I was asked to create a series of multicultural images to be use by people with learning disabilities.

The company who had approached me, Total Communication CIC, had presented me with a very clear design brief. The images needed to be simple, concise line drawings without any embellishment, which could possibly distract from the primary object of focus.

I was quickly presented with a list of over...