People

Halla is built around three hubs. Each one starts from what the person wants to do, and each one can be done with as much or as little help as they want. Step by step, people build their independence. Each person decides how they take part, and how much access their supporters and family members have.  

Recreation hub

Local classes, clubs and groups, matched to what someone enjoys and what helps them have a good time. In the app this is "What is on" or "Events".

Each person says what they like, what they find hard and what helps them take part: step-free access, a quiet space to take a break, a quiet environment, room to move around and music. Halla puts the things that fit first, and says how far away each one is.

Every class shows what actually happens, where to go, what time, who else is going and what to bring, with photos of the room and the way in. Pick one and it goes into your week. If you can’t go, you say so with one press. When a course ends, the group get first refusal on continuing the next block, so the friendships carry on. The connections you make at these events remain your connections. 

Learn and train hub

Accredited and non-accredited courses and skills sessions built around what someone wants to learn next, not just whatever happens to be running nearby. In the app this is Learn something.

A person keeps their own record of the things they can do, step by step and in their own words, and chooses what information to share with an event or course coordinator in advance. The next course builds on the last one, rather than starting from scratch each time.

Courses and training sit alongside classes in the same app, booked the same way, with the same help on hand.

Enterprise Support hub

For some people, the opportunity that matters is not a class. It is building something of their own. In the app this is Create.

You cannot find a co-founder in a small pool

Entrepreneurship is one of the few routes where a person designs the work around themselves, rather than negotiating their way into someone else's terms. No accommodation process delivers that much autonomy.

Building something takes more than one person, though, and most people's networks stop at whoever else happens to be in their own programme. You cannot find a co-founder, a collaborator or a first customer in a pool of twelve. Halla's enterprise strand exists to make that pool bigger.

What this looks like in practice

Often it is a small group coming together to build something real, a product or a service, where any profit is agreed and shared across the team, and where the customers and the transactions are real rather than a simulated version of work.

Someone who has done a course through Halla and is sharp on a computer, but finds a busy room hard going, might pair with someone who makes things by hand and needs help running the sales side. Halla is built to make that kind of match possible.

A leg up, not a sheltered version of work

Nobody is ever asked to accept something worse because of who made it. What gets built through Halla has to hold its own on price and on quality against anything else on the shelf. That is what makes the independence real rather than symbolic.

Support that fits the job

People usually arrive with support already in place, most often a care worker trained in safeguarding and accessibility rather than in building a business. Those are two different jobs, and we do not ask one person to do both. Halla is designed so that the support someone already has can work alongside someone better equipped to support business development.

Where to start

If you are thinking about this for yourself, or for someone you support, log in or create an account. 

Nothing needs to be worked out in advance.