Who we are
“[Working with Words] are an excellent organisation which works with people with learning disabilities to provide accessible versions of complex documents for people with learning difficulties. I highly recommend them.”
Tower Hamlets Council
Background
Working with Words makes information easy for people with learning difficulties and people with low literacy. - We train people with learning difficulties in work and life skills. Our objects describe our organisation's aims.
- We have been making information accessible since 1998.
- We are based in Woolwich, which is part of the London Borough of Greenwich,
- We are a registered charity (Charity no 1075001) and a limited company (Registered in England and Wales no 3564550).
- In 2009 we became an independent subsidiary of mcch.
Our early days
- The original idea to make information accessible for people with learning difficulties came for members of Voice in Greenwich, a self advocacy group. They had found that people in their organisation had been finding letters from benefits and housing offices difficult to understand.
- Working with Words was set up as part of the Millennium Project which was funded by the European Social Fund, alongside Access to Employment and a training project in Greenwich.
- We have worked closely with Greenwich learning disability services to offer training to service users from the outset.
- In 2001 we received a grant from the Community Fund to develop our training and work and to integrate young people from local schools and colleges into the organisation.
We received funding from the European Social Fund for the 'Time to Pass Go' Project in 2002.- In 2003 we received funding from the European Year of Disabled People. This enabled us to develop the Count Us In Project which resulted in a video, audio CD and booklet about how to make meetings friendly to people with learning disabilities.
- More recently we have received funding for the 'I'm a Person Too' Project - a collaboration with Advocacy in Greenwich and other Beacon awarded local councils.
Income: funding and contracts
- We have worked consistently with the London Borough of Greenwich who fund us for our training work with service users.
- We have received funding from many organisations such as the Community Fund, the European Year for Disabled People, the European Social Fund, Lloyds TSB, Awards for All, and many others.
- We also receive money from our customers who pay us for the work that we do to make their information accessible.
Our work on accessible information
Since 1998, our customers have included: Transport for London, the Healthcare Commission, the Ministry of Justice, The Department of Health, Nationwide Building Society, Valuing People Team, Learning and Skills Council, Mencap, iDeA and many others.- We have produced accessible documents in a variety of formats: for print, for presentations, audio CD's and MP3 files, DVD's and web sites.
More about accessible information
People
Find out more about:
More about us
- Annual Report (pdf, 2.12mb)
- Get involved with our work
