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Foyers provide housing and education for 16–25-year-olds who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. The Foyers project involved designing staff training and student programmes for residents of Foyers and has been part of ongoing work between the Newham College of Further Education and the Foyers Federation over several years.

This latest European-funded project targeted research into ways of integrating Skills for Life learning into the learning programmes offered by the federation. The research evaluated what would be successful and would work with the target group, and made recommendations to that effect in a report.

Tribal’s role in this project was to build on existing m-learning work to develop m-learning screeners aimed at getting Foyer residents through an initial process of assessment, which would be both safe and non-confrontational. Previous experience had suggested that the Foyer residents enjoyed the privacy afforded by doing this sort of activity on a mobile.

Following initial workshops and focus group activity with support workers and Foyer residents, (on which interesting and appropriate topics were incorporated), three m-learning screeners were developed for literacy, numeracy and ESOL. These gave a broad view of whether or not a learner was able to work at Level 1 in any or all of these three areas. The screeners were trialled by Foyers around the country and the subsequent evaluation has contributed to the ongoing efforts to develop and deliver coherent staff and client training programmes for Foyers – in particular, programmes that incorporate Skills for Life elements.