Background: Health research is increasingly conducted with the active involvement of the people who are the focus of the research. People with intellectual disabilities also participate actively in research; this is called inclusive research. Collaboration in inclusive research teams requires shared decision-making (SDM). Although inclusive…

Background: The issues surrounding the prescribing and monitoring of medications for people with learning disabilities and behaviours deemed to be challenging, and are complex in their management for patients, healthcare professionals and carers. The aim of the study was to explore the impact of the pharmacist independent prescriber on a…

Background: This study investigated perceived quality of life (QoL) of community-dwelling middle-aged adults (30-50 years) with an intellectual disability and/or developmental disability living in rural or urban areas in New South Wales and Queensland, Australia. The specific aim of the current paper was to provide a descriptive evidence base of…

Background: Person-centred planning, which commonly becomes formalised within services for people with learning disabilities through an Essential Lifestyle Plan (ELP), was intended to help place the choices of individuals at the forefront of service provision. However, beyond UK government policy rhetoric, scholars have raised issues regarding the…

Although the development of secure attachments has been shown to be more problematic for people with learning disabilities, there is a shortage of research into the attachment experience of people with learning disabilities who have broken the law. The present study used thematic analysis to explore the attachment experiences of 10 men with…

Our work, based on two pieces of research, aims to show how we try to get the voice of persons with learning disabilities. In both pieces of work, the second of which is still under progress, we have used video as the means by which we can collect and show what people are saying in the context and situation in which they find themselves. As we…

There is very little literature concerning how women with intellectual disabilities conceptualise their sexuality or develop a sexual identity. Semi-structured interview schedules were used to guide interviews with 10 women with intellectual disabilities. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the interview transcripts. Many of the women could not…

We live in an increasingly sexualised society, and the buying and selling of sex is a feature of this society. The laws about prostitution are complex, but the act of selling or buying sex is in itself not illegal. The author has extensive clinical experience of hearing the stories of men with learning disabilities who do use commercial sex…

Protection of those deemed vulnerable has received increasing attention since 2000. This article reports on care staff views of vulnerability using original data from a research study (Parley. "Vulnerability and abuse: an exploration of views of care staff working with people who have learning disabilities," PhD Thesis, 2007) in which care staff…

A phenomenological methodology was used to explore the lived experiences of belonging to a self-advocacy group for people with intellectual disabilities. Thirteen persons with intellectual disabilities who attend three self-advocacy day centre based groups in a city in the west of Ireland were the sample identified for the study. Changes affected…

Although co-production of research with people who access support services is increasingly common, details about how people who access support services can take more of an assertive role in developing research proposals and method design remains sketchy. This article reflects on the development of a research project on adult protection practice in…

Mutual Support, a model of peer support by and for people with learning difficulties, was constructed through a participatory research process. The research focussed on individual narratives from people with learning difficulties. These narratives were then brought together to form a collective model of support. This paper outlines the detailed…

In the late 20th century, the day services which had been set up for adults defined as having learning disabilities became understood as problematic because of the effects of segregation. The new solution became the adjustment of services to support a governmental form of personhood; a model of personhood defined by independence, the ability to…

The rise of new public management has seen the role of the social worker becoming increasingly administrative and less about face to face contact with service users. When commissioning managers seek to help people with learning disabilities plan their services, who actually makes the decisions? Direct payments are proposed as the answer for people…

Securing meaningful involvement in service development and provision can be seen as a particular challenge for people with learning difficulties. The National Health Service & Community Care Act [(1990) HMSO, ISBN 0105419907] and more recently Valuing People [Department of Health (2001) "Valuing people: a new strategy for learning…