Flourishing Lives

This project, led by Prof Sara Ryan and funded by the NIHR School for Social Care Research, used a Capability Approach to try to work beyond the inertia that sits around the impact of research involving people with learning disabilities.

We conducted interviews and focus groups with people with learning disabilities and then held a learning community that met online across a 9 month period. The learning community included support workers, people with learning disabilities, family carers and researchers.

Project findings and outputs

The findings and project resources can be found here.

Academic papers

Ryan, S. and Russell, S., 2026. Thinking Together; A Social Care Learning Community,‘10 Minutes of Britney’and Flourishing Lives. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 39(4), p.e70281.

Ryan, S. and O’Brien, R., 2024. Using a capability approach to explore how people with intellectual disabilities can lead flourishing lives. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 37(6), p.e13299.