The Information Technologists' Company

Our members have worked with a number of other charities. These include:

ITC’s Recreation and Leisure Panel has worked with the Royal Chelsea Children’s Hospital School (CCHS) over a ten year period. The school caters for children whose illnesses stop them from attending a traditional school and the Panel has worked with the staff at the school to provide the children with the latest technology to assist their learning.

Chelsea Children’s Hospital school’s (CCHS) roots began back in 1990 through the Westminster Children’s Hospital and shortly after taking over the reigns of the Collingham Gardens Psychiatric unit. In 1993 the Westminster Children’s Hospital was closed and the unit was moved to the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital at 369 Fulham road, where the then current CEO made a request to the school to take on the teaching unit based at the Royal Brompton Hospital. The Cheyne Day centre unit at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital was also absorbed into the organisation in 1996 and more recently (2005) CCHS have taken on the hospital school at St Mary’s Hospital.

Since 1997 Colin Knight and the Recreation and Leisure Panel (through ITC) has greatly assisted the school in ICT, initially purchasing a special needs PC then in 2000/1 providing a 3 year package consisting of Hardware, software, cabling and support from Alphameric PLC.

The network model developed for the Royal Chelsea Children’s Hospital School was subsequently incorporated into a number of children’s hospices. This proved very successful in providing access to IT both to the children staying in the hospices and their siblings and families. The Royal Masonic Trust for Girls and Boys selected this initiative as their millennium project, providing project management to roll out the model to every children’s hospice in England. The ‘Lifelites’ network – was launched as an independent charity in August 2006, still benefiting from the expertise of ITC members.

Centrepoint is the UK’s leading youth homelessness charity providing support and accommodation to around 2000 young people a year. Working with Sun Microsystems and other partners such as the ITC, Centrepoint has developed the e-room concept whereby rooms of young people at risk of homelessness and social exclusion are ICT enabled so that they do not become part of what the government commonly refers to as the “digitally disadvantaged”. It also fits with the recommendations contained within the Social Exclusion Unit’s report Inclusion Through innovation: Tackling Social Exclusion (published November 2005) that encouraged the expansion of ICT facilities in hostels for the homeless.

Centrepoint recognises that access to the Internet is vital to the development of learning, education, employment and ultimately the achievement of independent living and a number of its services do have ICT suites available. The e-room project takes this one step further and was piloted at Centrepoint Salter’s City Foyer with 6 young people involved in the project.

The Information Technologists Company was instrumental in providing advice during the design of the pilot phase.

Helping to develop a system of online communication across its network of 100+ members.

Advising this Cambridge-based charity, which provides an advocacy service for people with learning difficulties and advises organisations that serve this client group on IT strategy.

Helping implement a voluntary management system for this charity based in Covent Garden, which was established in 1965 to relieve the acute loneliness of frail, very older people living alone with limited or inadequate social support.

OpenAge is a charity focused on helping senior citizens to lead full and fulfilling lives. We worked with the charity to develop and deliver two internet cafes, one in Ladbroke Grove, and a second in West London. We brought our experience of building and operating robust networks based on the same technology as Lifelites.