Commentary on “Keep safe: collaborative practice development and research with people with learning disabilities”

Abstract

Purpose Inspired by the work of the Keep Safe Advisory Group, this paper aims to explain and make the case for co-production as a powerful model for working alongside people with learning disabilities. Design/methodology/approach The collaborative approach of the Keep Safe advisory group is the authors’ springboard for a deep dive into the power and potential of co-production as a model. As organisational leaders – one with and one without a learning disability – the authors draw on their personal experience to argue that co-production is essential to recognising the adulthood of people with learning disabilities. Findings Co-production means the equal sharing of power and responsibility from the start, best served by the leap of faith of a blank agenda. Co-production values different kinds of expertise as complementary – broadly considered as expertise from lived experience and professional expertise. When working co-productively, a deep investment of time to understand people pays dividends in outcomes and everyone’s personal and professional growth. Co-production enriches the lives of everyone taking part. Originality/value Co-production, though common currency in health and social care, remains too rarely understood and practiced. Readers will benefit from this reflective viewpoint, which aims to clarify and deepen what co-production really means. In particular, enabling people with learning disabilities to take responsibility for themselves and others is rarely considered but is presented here as foundational to human maturity and adulthood.

Being human as praxis: for people with learning disabilities

“…This work is further evidence, if it was ever needed, that People with Learning Disabilities are theorists, researchers and analysts in their own right. There is now a burgeoning literature in the human and social sciences documenting the opportunities afforded by democratising the research enterprise and bringing in People with Learning Disabilities as depathologising researchers in their own right (for examples see Kiernan 1999;McClimens 2007;Chapman et al 2014;Nind et al 2016;Murray 2019;Liddiard et al 2019;Clifton and Chapman 2020). In sitting with theorisations of the human and learning disability in this paper, we are reminded of the need to position People with Learning Disabilities not simply as research partners, the co-producers of research inquiry or as equal participants in methodological endeavour.…”