Learning disabled people’s intimate lives: Accounting for Austerity

Dr Kirsty Liddiard, University of Sheffield (Principal Investigator) and Dr Ruth Garbutt (University of Huddersfield).

Dr Ruth Garbutt was a collaborator on a successful Wellcome Trust project in 2016 entitled 'Learning disabled people’s intimate lives: Accounting for Austerity', worth £5,240.The money will fund a 2 day participatory research meeting, the aim of which is to co-produce and design future inquiry: identifying areas of concern; designing research questions; planning impact; and undertaking the necessary planning involved in high quality co-produced disability research alongside people with learning disabilities and their organisations.  Specifically, the meeting will bring together self-advocates (people with learning disabilities) and their organisations, and academics, practitioners and researchers, to share concerns, knowledge, and experiences of the ways in which austerity politics are reshaping intimate citizenship for learning disabled people  – that is, their rights to personal, intimate and sexual life and access to family, love, sex, kinship, friendship, and community.

The project has many collaborators, including:  Dimensions (not-for-profit organisation supporting people with learning disabilities and autism); Speak Up Self-Advocacy Rotherham (a grassroots self-advocacy organisation based in Rotherham); academics and researchers from the University of Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam University, Manchester Metropolitan University, University of Huddersfield, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada, and McMaster University, Ontario, Canada.

Academic outputs included:

• Identified areas of significant concern and/or research questions that can be critically explored through further research funding.

• A strong and robust network of close collaborators who will commit to co-producing a future bid for research funding.

• An Easy Read report reflecting back on the process and issues raised, hosted across identified institutional and project blog spaces.

• An online photographic archive of design fiction storyboards and graphic note-taking art.

• A post-Meeting International Symposium given by Dr Ann Fudge-Schormans, McMaster University, Canada and Dr Esther Ignagni, Ryerson University, Canada.

For further information go to:  https://intimatecitizens.wordpress.com/