L’Arche

L’Arche is a worldwide federation of people, with and without learning disabilities, working together for a world where all belong. L’Arche UK has 11 communities where it celebrates people with learning disabilities, attends to their emotional and spiritual lives, and builds communities with them.

The challenge

As L’Arche UK approached its 50th anniversary, it decided to take stock. As it moved from a founder-led to a mission-led era, it wanted everyone in the L’Arche community to be clear, confident and united about what it aimed to achieve for people with learning disabilities in 2020s Britain and how it would achieve this.

The approach

We helped to facilitate “The Big Conversation” – a survey of all 11 L’Arche UK Communities, inviting members to talk about the difference L’Arche makes for people with and without learning disabilities, what L’Arche needs to do to make that difference a reality, and how L’Arche will know that what it is doing is effective. We developed tools for community leaders to use with their core members (people with learning disabilities), suggesting questions they could ask and offering options for how to record the answers (interviews, group work, creating pictures, etc.). To make sure what we were doing was not too burdensome for L’Arche Communities, we initially interviewed a selection of L’Arche staff about the organisation’s existing data collection and impact monitoring processes.

After this Big Conversation, we analysed the results that had come in from across the L’Arche Communities. This fed into the development of a Theory of Change (captured in a report called Describing the difference L’Arche makes), followed by a survey and dashboard for future data collection relating to the outcomes identified in the Theory of Change.

Throughout our work, we frequently consulted a Learning Group consisting of people with learning disabilities, staff and volunteers involved with L’Arche. The members gave us feedback on our proposed actions and tools, ensuring that our work remained relevant and could be understood by all at L’Arche. Before each session, we developed Easy Read pre-reading material, with large text and accompanying pictures, to be as accessible as possible.

The result

L’Arche and its communities came away with real clarity and consensus about what they are trying to do and how they can measure this, across their two major roles of professional care and spirituality. After our work together, L’Arche went on to have further Big Conversations with its members and began using their new survey and dashboard to track whether their work is being delivered and experienced as intended, across all of their communities.