Rethinking learning disability: contexts, voices, policies

Like many areas of publicly funded services, the provision of health and social services for adults with learning disabilities has been subjected to considerable pressure and change in recent years. This has been a result of various factors. Firstly, 'positive' factors, such as the recognition of the rights of people with learning disabilities and changes in policy and service philosophies towards more 'self-directed' models. Secondly, the increasing pressures being placed on services: ageing populations, reduced resources, and competing priorities has led to changing thresholds of qualification for services, often removing people with mild and moderate levels of learning disability from service entitlement altogether. However, given that the very idea of 'learning disability' implies additional support needs, the removal of services for people currently considered 'learning disabled' throws into question its very meaning.

Even the shift towards 'rights-based' thinking has cast questions over the nature of learning disability, indeed there is a looming question as to whether or not it even has a 'nature'. For instance, the suggestion that people with learning disabilities are 'the same as you' (to quote Scottish government policy), with the same rights and needs, casts an unexplored shadow over whether and in what circumstances learning disability can be said to exist and what it would mean.

Conceptually, the field of 'learning disability' is heavily dominated by medicine and psychology, often with a preponderance of empiricism in research. That said, it is well established that learning disability is not an immutable characteristic of individuals. However, the extent to which, as a social status, it is shaped by specific historical, cultural and socio-spatial circumstances is relatively under-explored. In particular, there is insufficient work that helps to connect the work of social science researchers with policy-makers and practitioners. This series of developmental critical dialogues will provide space for the development of new lines of thought that allow for the introduction of greater socio-spatial, cultural and historical dimensions to enrich the field.

Seminar 1: Intersections in time and space: new academic dialogues
The first seminar will bring together historians, geographers, sociologists and philosophers, into dialogue with medics and psychologists, to develop and reflect upon a contextually-sensitive understanding of 'learning disability'.
Seminar 2: The same as you?: voices of experience and encounter
The second seminar is perhaps the most challenging, but also the most crucial. The seminar will provide an open space for the voices of people with learning disabilities, and those who care for and support them, to examine and critique the contextually-sensitive model of learning disability developed in seminar 1. Appropriate formats will be used to encourage accessibility and representation for all participants, including drama and illustration to capture findings.
Seminar 3: Towards a contextually-sensitive landscape of care: new policy dialogues
The final seminar will bring together materials gathered in the previous seminars, seeking responses from learning disability policy makers in central government, government agencies, and third sector. New paths for policy shaped by a contextual model of learning disability will be examined.

The key purpose of the seminar series is to produce a new conceptual framework that will impact on three interrelated groups beyond academia: people with learning disabilities, their carers and families; service providers and social care professionals; and policy makers (including national and local government, and the third sector).

An evidence base dominated by essentialist approaches and, by implication, professional and planning practices derived therefrom, are inadequate for dealing with future challenges to service provision. The development of a 'contextual model' of learning disability, and dialogue with service providers, service users, and policy makers thereon, will assist them directly in responding to key economic and demographic challenges.

The seminars will not provide policy makers, service providers, or users with blueprints for the future of service provision, it is beyond our scope and purview to do so. What the series will do, however, is to help put that service planning process and the negotiations amongst those directly involved (policy makers, professionals, service users and carers) on a more rational and constructive footing. This will encourage more creative and innovative thinking in response to future challenges.

At present, concepts of learning disability locate it as a 'condition' within individuals, rather than a social status that is the outcome of highly contingent and contextual factors. Such notions of learning disability, and service ideologies, also fail to recognise its extremely historically, culturally and spatially mutable nature. Introducing these elements, in the form of the contextual model, allows for a greater recognition that future possibilities for service provision are more open and flexible than we might currently suppose. We will help policy makers, service providers, and users to think of different possible futures.

The seminar series will take place (2012-2013) in a period of sustained change in policy and financial frameworks in social care in the UK. The seminars will be extremely well placed to engage with the key actors and organisations in informing and shaping this new social care landscape to make it more suitable, responsive and effective for the needs of people with learning disabilities, their families and carers.

The seminars will also provide an innovative forum for dialogue between people with learning disabilities, their families, service providers and policy-makers. The contextual model and the use of creative methods to stimulate discussion, particularly in seminar two, will help facilitate these new dialogues.

In addition, the series will have a number of other important impacts:

-Dialogues: Direct involvement of non-academic participants in the seminars, to co-produce with academic participants, a 'contextual model' of learning disability. Overall, the series will establish a new forum for dialogue and new networks between the various parties.
-Blogging and social networking: Extension of the dialogues into the blogosphere and the use of social networking, to engage people with learning disabilities, professionals and service providers (use of separate virtual spaces for the different groups).
-Consultation and training: Potential end-users of the research can commission the project team to facilitate staff training and help with policy development drawing on the contextual model.
-Research futures: New more productive cross-disciplinary research links and opportunities, relevant to policy makers, service providers and people with learning disabilities.