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The academic study of disability may itself be disabling for the group being studied, but a new course seeks to break down this effect by involving people with learning difficulties. Graham Hopkins reports.

With joint working increasingly the done thing, it is strange that we still have two very distinct and entrenched views of disability: the medical model, which sees it in terms of people having something "wrong with them"; and the social model, which sees the "problem" of disability not with the person's impairment but with the barriers their society or environment forces them to face. Remove the barriers, it is therefore argued, and you remove the disability.

The barriers facing people with learning difficulties often take the form of negative ideas or expectations about their "deficits" and "limitations", which may deny them chances to join in fully with society.

As ever, education is the key to the sweet shop. And yet research, founded on the medical model, has shown that academic study has pulled down the shutters on positive ideas and expectations of people with learning difficulties.¹

Thus academic study of learning difficulties may itself be disabling for the group being studied. This has inspired Manchester University to launch a new degree programme to counter that trend.

Launched in September 2001, The BA (Hons) Learning Disability Studies course shuns the associated "signs" and "symptoms" of particular "syndromes" or "conditions", in favour of analysing those social and ideological factors that result in the disadvantage and low status of people with learning difficulties.

  "Additionally," says lecturer in education Iain Carson, "as a result of being involved in research in partnership with people with learning difficulties, I have increasingly been made aware that they want to be supported by people who operate within a social model approach." Crucially, the course "aims to bring about real change in the lives of people who have learning difficulties by working in partnership with them".

And who better to help inform the design and teaching of the course than people with learning difficulties themselves? With at least half the course's steering group made up of people with learning difficulties, they certainly have a strong hand on the wheel.

Daniel Docherty of self-advocacy group Manchester People First was sceptical at first: "As a learning disabled adult, I see some of the bad points in relation to what this new degree is trying to do. A lot of people like myself wouldn't want to tell stuff to students whom we didn't really know - we'd have to get to know them."

Docherty continues: "We didn't want students coming to us saying, 'This is what I want to do' or 'This is what I've got to do for my course.' We wanted to tell students, 'This is what I'd like you to help me with. This is what I'd like to do.'"

At the design stage people with learning difficulties offered their services in return for Carson offering himself as a volunteer advocate. "Once the course was up and running, they became an integral part of the team, involved in teaching, monitoring students' practice and devising assessment tools, for which they are paid," adds Carson.

Also, as part of its commitment to widening participation, the university targeted mature students, believing their experience to be more valuable than any academic qualification. As one mature student says, "I thought before we started that having no qualifications would be a problem, but it hasn't been, because it's work-related."

Carson says:"It's early days yet, but we hope that students, staff and people with learning difficulties will all be partners in learning. We hope to learn about the barriers that disable people with learning difficulties in our society, and to work together towards removing them."

Background

Scheme: Involving people with learning difficulties in the design and teaching of BA (Hons) Learning Disability Studies.

Location: Manchester.

Staffing: Three members of teaching staff (equivalent to 1.8 full-time staff).

Inspiration: A growing awareness of the needs of support workers and advocates who did not want to undertake traditional nursing or social work training.

Cost: People with learning difficulties are paid (collectively) £80 per hour, which they have chosen to pay into Manchester People First.

Reference

¹ M Potts and R Fido, A Fit Person to be Removed, Northcote House, 1991; J Ryan and F Thomas, The Politics of Mental Handicap, Free Association Books, 1987

Resources

For more information contact Iain Carson on 0161-275-3382 or iain.s.carson@man.ac.uk   Information leaflets and course philosophy will be sent on request. Also try: www.ucas.ac.uk/dunit/m20/educate/b760/index.html