Funded Project Spotlight: Capacity Conversations

Introduction

Imagine you’re in a café with a friend, and when you reach the till, the barista asks your friend what you would like to order.

You try to check your banking app to see how much money you have left, but remember that you don’t actually have the login to view your own account.

Imagine you’re in hospital, and the medication you’ve been told will help you hasn’t been tested with the community you represent.

This is the case for learning-disabled people every day, because someone had assumed they lack capacity to make choices for themselves.

Capacity conversations, led by Melissa Kirby (LIHS) and Hannah Greenwood (Purple Patch Arts) is bringing together learning disability and capacity experts, including people with learning disabilities, to have vital conversations about capacity. By combining different perspectives and expertise from within and beyond the University, the project will explore potential language, questions and activities that support learning-disabled people to understand and have conversations about capacity. Our goal is to break down the capacity barrier in research, empowering researchers across all disciplines to feel more confident to involve learning-disabled people in research and to have open conversations about capacity and capacity assessments.

The project so far

The project is in its early stages of development, but we will begin by mapping key experts across law, education, social work, health and lived experience to participate in a workshop about capacity. We will then work with the Purple Research Group (PRG), a team of learning-disabled adults who have been involved in a variety of research projects, to pilot and refine the tools we develop. In order to ensure that the PRG can engage meaningfully with the topic of capacity, we will use the Purple Patch Approach, which combines creative activities with inclusive learning methods to bring ideas to life.

We have a brilliant team of collaborators, including Dr Amy Russell (LIHS), ADVONET, Dr Victoria Shepherd and Dr Martine Svobodova (Cardiff University) and Prof Beverley Clough (Manchester Metropolitan University), who will help us to shape the project's direction and identify opportunities for further collaboration and impact.

Looking ahead

We hope this work will result in an increase in learning-disabled people’s involvement in life enhancing research across all fields, with the potential for huge societal impact. Alongside the funding, we'll also benefit from coaching and mentoring through Leeds Institute for Societal Futures, helping us to strengthen the project, develop our plans and prepare for the next stage of our journey.

Find out about the other funded Shape Tomorrow Together projects here.