Understanding Transition:
A Learning Disability and Autism Perspective
Since 2022, the PCP Community Research Team have been working directly with the learning disability community to try to understand their experiences. We have spoken to people living with a learning disability and/or autism (LD&/A), their families and caregivers, as well as the perspectives of professionals delivering specialist and non-specialist services in County Durham.
We focused on individuals’ experiences of transition, particularly from school life into college/adulthood, moving services/home, and the changes that are involved in growing older. We made use of a variety of methods, including conducting focus groups, creative workshops and producing research films to capture opinions from a wider group.
Our goal is to identify gaps and opportunities in service provision while determining future needs. We hope we can help bring improved and better coordinated services, helping people living with LD&/A to get the right support to live the life they want in their local community, as per the UK government’s ambition.
Latest developments and resources
In July 2023, the team held a final workshop inviting members of the community (individuals, parents/carers, and professionals) to deliver interim results and facilitate further discussion.
Coming Soon
Working with Journey Enterprise, a day service based in Coundon, we are in the process of producing a series of videos as a novel approach to our research. We invited individuals to speak about their experiences around employment and how they have made a contribution to their local neighbourhoods. These will be shared here as well as via social media when available.
Latest Developments
The findings of this consultation were presented to the Resilience Community Group on 21st November 2023 with recommendations on how support for the learning disability community can be improved. There is interest in developing a Phase II for this project, which will explore what effective interventions PCP can implement quickly. Information will be shared here when available.