case study – gloucestershire group homes

Gloucestershire Group Home (GGH) is a UK registered charity and a specialist residential and day service for adults with a diagnosis of Asperger syndrome and high functioning autism.

The use of computers and IT for staff and service users has evolved over the years as technology and understanding has developed but there was no network or central management or holistic overview of the IT service.

There were three distinct groups of users: admin staff, care staff and service users. Each group had different needs and we were able to create a highly reliable and useable system to cater for these groups.

Using recycled hardware to keep the costs down, GGH have a linux based file server with RAID 5 SATA storage that lets service users and care staff authenticate and mount their NFS based home directories from the network of Apple eMacs running MacOS 10.4, MacOS 10.5 and several Windows 2000 and XP computers using roaming profiles and Samba.

This works beautifully, giving users clear and reliable control over their computer environment, so important for individuals with an autistic spectrum disorder.