Many adults with intellectual disabilities only have limited access to education and training. When programmes exist, the trainers are mostly people without intellectual disabilities. The TOPSIDE project addressed this issue by developing a programme which prepares adults with intellectual disabilities to provide support and training to their peers.
The objective of this programme was twofold: offer new training opportunities for people with intellectual disabilities to reinforce their basic skills and create employment and volunteering opportunities for trained peer supporters.
The TOPSIDE+ project built upon the TOPSIDE project by
- increasing the number of teaching methods
- involving people with intellectual disabilities more systematically, for example by creating an easy-to-read curriculum
- developing policy recommendations on the topic of peer support
Read our articles on the TOPSIDE and TOPSIDE+ projects.
| Implementation Period | 2011 – 2013 & 2014 – 2016 |
| Financed by | European Commission – under the “LifeLong Learning“ and “Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices” Programmes |
| Project Coordinator | Inclusion Europe |
| Project Partners | Adapei |
Pilot courses of the TOPSIDE programme were run in Czechia, Finland, Romania, Spain, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.
Project partners also produced a number of publications, namely:
- Methodological Guidelines for trainers on how to plan the training programme
- a Curriculum in Easy-to-Read Language for peer supporters on how to prepare and run the training
- a database of exercises to train people with intellectual disabilities to become peer supporters
- Material for peers, which contains examples of portfolios that training participants kept to remind them what they have learned
- Guidelines for mentors of trained peer supporters
- Policy recommendations
TOPSIDE trained people with intellectual disabilities
to support other people
with intellectual disabilities.
We developed a training programme.
With the programme, people with intellectual disabilities can:
- be students and learn new things
- work as trainers and get work experience.
This project was done
between 2011 and 2013 for the first time.
Between 2014 and 2016 we did it again.
This time we called it TOPSIDE+,
and more people joined.
