We often talk about change in our communities, creating better services, more inclusive policies, and a fairer society. But too often, the research that drives these changes is done about people, without ever truly involving the people whose lives are actually being impacted. At People First, we believe that needs to change. That’s we created our Community Change Lab.
What is a Community Change Lab?
A Community Change Lab is an inclusive, collaborative space where people with a learning disability work as equal partners alongside researchers, practitioners, and service managers to plan and conduct real-world research. You might hear this called “co-design", “co-research” or “participatory research”. Whatever the name the goal is the simple: to use the unique lived experience of people with a learning disability to create innovations that actually improve lives.
We believe that people with learning disabilities have unique knowledge that is often overlooked. By bringing this knowledge to the forefront, we can make services better, influence policies, and help create a world where everyone can thrive.
Why is this work important?
Too often, people with a learning disability are excluded from research and design processes that dictate the quality of their own support. The Community Change Lab identified key issues that face people with learning disabilities:
- Discrimination
- Accessibility
- Mental and physical health
- Education
- Employment
- Housing
- Safety
In looking at how these issues overlap our co-researchers are not just identifying problems, they’re actively designing solutions.
How is the Community Change Lab set up?
The Community Change Lab has 3 parts:
A core team – Headed up by Professor Kaz Stuart, the Core team manages the work of the Community Change Lab and includes people with lived experience and their support staff, staff from People First, academics, practitioners from learning disability services and researchers.
The core team decides what to research we wish to plan, how to make it good quality and safe, how to make sure people see the research we do and how to fund the work we want to do. They also decide if we take part in other people’s research and how to keep people engaged in a wider community of researchers.
An advisory panel – The advisory panel is designed to help us do high quality research that is safe for everyone. They support the Core Team and are made up of academics with experience of learning disability research and managers from People First who understand policies, structures, and resources.
A community of researchers – These are people who would like to be involved in different stages of research projects. The community of researchers will include people with learning disabilities, academics and practitioners from health and social care organisations.
I am interested; how can I find out more?
Our Community Change Lab is holding a launch event, on Tuesday 30th June, and you would be welcome to join us that day to find out more about our scope of research.
You can register here: https://bit.ly/3OfdE4D
You can also look at our website that has much more information on our Community Change Lab: https://bit.ly/CCLResearch
If you are interested in joining our community of researchers, and are:
- Over 18 years old who says they have a learning disability
- An academic with expertise in learning disability research
- And any practitioner or manager with expertise in delivering services for people with learning disabilities.
You can find information on our community Change Lab projects and an application form in the document below, or you can email us at [email protected]