Inclusive Research with People with Learning Disabilities

Walmsley and Johnson have presented us with an excellent book in Inclusive Research with People with Learning Disabilities. As the full title suggests, this book explores the past, present and futures of inclusive research with people with learning disabilities. This is done well. I found this book both intriguing and enjoyable. It is full of insight, fact and reference, and is written in a clear and illuminating style. In many places throughout this well-ordered text examples are usefully employed to highlight the discussion. Without a doubt, I think that this book is a timely addition to the area. It fills a gap in the literature and is clearly and authoritatively written. In my view it should be essential reading for anyone concerned with the lives of people with learning disabilities. -- British Journal Of Social Work This is a fascinating book, partly because of it's subject matter, partly because the very ambivalence it identifies among inclusive researchers is painfully played out on its pages. The authors aim to record, review and celebrate the achievements of inclusive research, but also to tackle the current `stifling' of debate about the very real challenges of involving people with learning disabilities in the research process. -- Social Policy Policy makers, researchers, practitioners and students should find in this reader some thought-provoking and authoritative information and advice on how to carry out truly inclusive research with people with learning disabilities. -- Care & Health Magazine Far more than a "how to do it" handbook. The pages are filled with thought-provoking suggestions, and nothing is taken for granted. The book was inspired by "questions we dared not ask", as the authors confess, and it does indeed consider a range of sensitive issues about power, ownership, initiation and value. -- Community Care

Jan Walmsley is a Senior Lecturer at the Open University School of Health and Social Welfare in Milton Keynes. Kelley Johnson is Professor of Disability, Policy and Practice at the University of Bristol, and Director of the Norah Fry Research Centre and together with Rannveig Traustadottir, edited Women with Intellectual Disabilities for Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Introduction: Reputable? Helpful?and Inclusive? Part 1. Describing the Past. 1. Of Shoes and Ships and Sealing Wax and Inclusive Research: Or Where Did It All Start? 2. Normalizing, Emancipating and Making a Stand. 3. Inclusive Research in Learning Disability: Beginnings. 4. Knowing the Elephant. Part 2. Exploring the Research Process. 5. Nothing About Us Without Us: Good Times Bad Times. 6. Living Safer Sexual Lives: Making Research Work. 7. What Matters to People with Learning Disabilities? 8. Managing Inclusive Research. 9. Who Uses it and How? 10. What Has Been Achieved. Part 3. Beyond Rhetoric to New Realities. 11. Beyond Rhetoric... 12. ...To New Realities. 13. Conclusion: Why Do It? References. Subject Index. Author Index.