Making positive moves: What support do people with Learning Disabilities need to remain living in the community after moving under the Transforming Care Programme. A qualitative longitudinal study.

Significant funding has been provided to Transforming Care (TC) since 2012 to move people with learning disabilities out of inpatient settings. However, there is limited evaluation of TC, with a lack of research focused on the perspective of service-users and what helps people to sustain community placements.
The aim of this study is to understand the perspective of an often marginalised and discriminated group by conducting longitudinal semi-structured interviews with people with learning disabilities who have moved out of hospital through TC. The study will examine the impact on well-being of living in the community and identify the key factors that support and undermine the ability to sustain community living over time.
The methodology will be based on Grounded Theory. 27 people who have moved under the TC programme will be recruited from 3 NHS services. After consent is established, two interviews will be conducted with each participant, and analysed beginning with line by line coding and progressing to focused coding. One year later, participants will be re-contacted, consent reassessed and participants asked to take part in two further interviews to explore changes over the preceding year. Data analysis will continue to a more conceptual level and a theoretical model developed to vividly describe experiences of community living, explore well-being and understand the complex interaction of factors over time that support the ability to sustain community living.