The National Development Team for Inclusion (NDTi) is working on research around housing services (supported living and residential care) for people with learning disabilities. We have undertaken focus groups with people with learning disabilities and family carers. We also interviewed some commissioners and housing and support providers. They all told us what is important to them. You can read the key findings here.
Family carers told us about the varied ways they support a relative with a learning disability in different housing settings and shared their concerns about what would happen (and does happen to people) without this input. We think the role, input and contribution of family carers is an important and neglected area. To explore this further we have created a questionnaire, based on what family carers have told us. If you are a family carer of somebody with a learning disability we would appreciate if you could take this survey by clicking on the following link. It should take around 30 minutes of your time. Please feel free to pass this email and link on to any family carers you know who may be interested/willing to share their experiences with us:
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/familycarerinput
The findings of this survey will help us start to quantity the contribution of family carers in terms of time and money spent supporting their relative, and will feed into a larger piece of research (more information about this here). If you have any queries or you want to find out more about this survey, please feel free to contact me directly (Geraldine Cooney, geraldine.cooney@ndti.org.uk; 07851246150).
If an online survey is problematic, I can arrange for a paper copy to be sent out. I can also offer some telephone interviews. Thank you in advance for your time and interest. Sharing your views and experiences will really help us understand the contribution of family carers in different housing settings.