Background: Shared housing for adults with intellectual disabilities with staff support, is a common housing model internationally. We explored an overlooked aspect of group homes, namely the extent to which they enable a sense of 'feeling at home' for residents. Method: A diverse group of 19 housemates participated in a photovoice study.…

Autistic people report greater comfort socialising and easier communication with each other. Despite autism being stereotypically associated with lack of social motivation, an autistic community has been described briefly in the literature but is not well understood. Autistic community connectedness may play a role in promoting wellbeing for…

Background: Adults with learning disabilities often face barriers when accessing relationships and can require additional support. The Personal Relationship Advisory Group (PRAG) is a provision in a community learning disability service in North England, which offers multidisciplinary advice regarding relationship concerns. The current project…

Young people moving from child and adolescent secure hospitals present with complex needs and vulnerabilities and are more likely to experience poor transition outcomes. Previous research has indicated the presence of several risk factors in periods of transition, such as poor liaison among services, lack of proper planning, shortage of beds in…

Leadership in the post-incorporation English further education system has not been distributed in nature, but transactional, driven by the external demands of funding and inspection regimes. However, in the light of the current rhetoric of localism in further education policy there is a view that distributed leadership would be an appropriate…

This paper presents the experiences of mature students at a satellite campus of an English higher education institution. Twenty students over age 25 who fit various widening participation criteria were interviewed at four points during their first two years of bachelor's level study at a higher education (HE) centre in an area underserved by HE.…

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child provides a significant platform to include children's views on issues that affect their lives, yet, in many contexts, particularly in educational practice, children's perspectives continue to be irregularly sought and are rarely acted upon. By providing children's perspectives on what they…

The NHS Constitution requires all NHS organisations to provide high-quality comprehensive services, based on clinical need, which do not discriminate between patients (DH 2010a). Together with its health and social care partners, the NHS also has a statutory duty of care to meet the needs of all patients with dignity and compassion. Recent…

The spending review brought a promise to protect adult and community learning as well as swingeing cuts to further and higher education and local government. In this article, some of the key players--Lynne Sedgmore, Christopher Brooks, Graham Hoyle, Maggie Galliers, Louise Hazel, Richard Bolsin, Maggi Dawson, Ruth Bond, Stuart Etherington, Brendan…

Background: A health service in an English city was concerned about its support to families with adults with intellectual disabilities and challenging behaviour. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven minority ethnic and seven majority ethnic family members to explore perceptions of challenging behaviour, support and the…

While children and young people's participation is a well-established research field, much less has been written about the roles that adults play in supporting this participation. This article examines the involvement of adults within participatory forums in English schools and local authorities. Drawing on empirical data from research on…

An audit was carried out to gain an overview of the profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD) population in a local health trust to inform current and future service provision. An overview of the issues faced in developing clear defining criteria is presented. Published definitions of PMLD were used to identify clients from data held on…

Examines the role of the "community school", particularly in reference to Cumberland County, England. Notes that a greater effort needs to be made to ensure that the adult part of the community is adequately considered and provided for, and that the adult education center should not be regarded as merely an adjunct of the secondary…

An ethnographic study of the "Literacy in the Community" project examined what ordinary people read and write in their everyday lives, how they make sense of literacy, and how it fits into the rest of their daily activities, focusing on literacy in the home. Subjects, 20 adults from Lancashire, England, between the ages of 20 and 30…

Contemporary studies of literacy can be divided into two sorts: those approaches which treat it as a psychological phenomenon and those which treat it as a social practice. This practice view of literacy can be sketched out by reporting the continuation and changing focus of a study conducted on adult learners' perceptions of literacy and…