Partnership event for project exploring views of social care services amongst people with learning disabilities

A team of researchers from the School of Psychology (including Gemma Unwin, Michael Larkin, Biza Kroese and John Rose) have been working on a project funded by the NIHR School for Social Care Research. The project has been exploring the views of social care services amongst people with learning disabilities from minority ethnic groups. The researchers interviewed 32 adults with learning disabilities from minority ethnic groups to find out about their views and experiences of social support. On the 29th November, they held an event at the University which involved working with people with learning disabilities, and with direct care providers, to get feedback on the preliminary outcomes of the study.

The event was at Lucas House. Fifty-four people attended. At the event, the team showed everyone the videos which they had made to reflect the interviewees’ concerns. The audience were asked to vote on the videos using cards.

Most people thought the videos were clear, interesting and relevant to them. They thought it was good to hear about other people’s ideas. The mood was really positive, and during the discussion afterwards the team received lots of constructive feedback on how to develop the videos further.

In the afternoon, everyone took part in a group activity, based around the five topics from the videos. The activities were developed in order to help service providers to find out more about service-users’ needs, and to help them to plan culturally- and personally-appropriate services.

Everyone said they enjoyed their activity and enjoyed the day. The team learned a lot about the activities which they had developed and will be using the feedback to improve them further before a final dissemination event for service-providers in 2014.

Here’s what some people said about the day:

“The day was very enjoyable and met different people with many interesting views.”

“I enjoyed the project that we did and all the different opinions that people said, it got me thinking.”

The researchers would like to thank everyone for coming and making it such a lively and interesting day. It is really helpful to the project.

For more information about the project, please visit their website: www.birmingham.ac.uk/ASC-LD