Being researchers for the first time: reflections on the development of an inclusive research group

Abstract

Accessible summary A group of people with a learning disability joined a group to talk about their lives Being part of it was important, and they have continued as a research group The group gives the members a voice and it helps them to know other people have similar issues to deal with. It has also shaped their identity – how they feel about their lives and themselves. Summary Money, Friends and Making Ends Meet was an inclusive research project; it enabled a group of people with a learning disability who do not receive specialist support services to explore their own lives. This group are often labelled as having a mild learning disability. The research project focused on the strategies they used to cope with day to day living, their experiences of poverty and the support received from their social networks and social capital. The group members found participation in the research project enabled them to have a voice, identify the social barriers in their lives and gave them support and confidence to take action about them and so resolve some of their difficulties. They also embraced the label of learning disability and wanted staff in front‐line services to be aware of this, so they had greater understanding and support. This article is written by the instigator of the research group, but with a central part written by the group members in their own words. It focusses on how participation in the research project had a major impact on the group members as they moved from individuals involved in a short term research project to an established research group with its own motivation and direction. The group has since received further grant funding to research the effects of the welfare reform on their lives, and some have completed a bespoke accredited course on doing inclusive research.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 18 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.