Creative Learning Abilities Partnerships: Time, Space and Fun

Introduction: Health and social care services need to be designed with those who use them. People with learning disabilities and autistic people have poor outcomes and lower life expectancy. It is vital that they are involved in shaping research, however, they have often been left out.
Methods: The Creative Learning Abilities Partnership (CLAPS) project aimed to make time, and give space, for researchers and people (with mild to moderate learning disability and autistic people), in community organisations to learn together and create sustainable partnerships. The paper is based on reflective learning from meetings, workshops, feedback from MENCAP members, researchers and public involvement contributors.
Results: The CLAPS team joined in existing Mencap activities. Three main areas of our learning on building partnerships were time, creative approaches and finding out what is important. Firstly, the need for informal time (for music and chatting) during the community engagement to help concentration and break the workshops into chunks. Also ‘behind the scenes, invisible time when the public co-lead and researcher planned workshops together, meeting in cafes or messaging via WhatsApp. Secondly, creative approaches included familiar games, bingo, soft toys and different ways to enable shared decision making (thumbs up/down paddles) and magnetic boards. Lastly, metaphors such as growing trees and climbing mountains were used to find out what was important in terms of health and wellbeing and build logic models.
The CLAPS team organised a celebration event with the two Mencaps which brought the two groups together for the first time. They have since independently continued to keep in contact and visit each other.
Conclusion: The CLAPS project was the first time two community Mencap organisations had worked with university researchers. They now have a partnership which has continued after the official funding ended. Sustained relationships with existing community groups are an important approach for research inclusion.