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Papers by Craig Blyth
Drawing on Badiou’s writing, we develop new insights on some central notions of the discourse on ... more Drawing on Badiou’s writing, we develop new insights on some central notions of the discourse on “disability.” We offer eight agonistic, intersecting trajectories addressing these concepts. Drawing on authorial voices, we criticize the grammatical and rhetorical maneuvers we have previously undertaken as we represent ourselves aiming for forms of participatory engagement, thus offering both critique and self-critique. Previous poststructuralist accounts in this area have drawn on “philosophers of difference,” but mainly Deleuze and Guattari. This piece offers innovation in harnessing aspects of Badiou’s thinking to issues surrounding “discourses of disability” and notions of the research “self” in its various “impersonations.”
This paper details the work of a group of learning disabled people (people with intellectual disa... more This paper details the work of a group of learning disabled people (people with intellectual disabilities) who contribute to the teaching of students undertaking a degree program at one of the UK's most elite universities. Traditional notions relating to knowledge production within academia are examined and we demonstrate how the participation of learning disabled people in classroom teaching challenges these. Drawing on the work of Freire (1972) the paper demonstrates how co-teaching by learning disabled people has a transformative impact on educational experiences. Finally, the current changes impacting the UK higher education sector are detailed and we explore how these changes are negatively impacting on courses that seek to move away from traditional approaches to pedagogy.
1997 saw the introduction of the Community Care (Direct Payments) Act in the UK. This piece of le... more 1997 saw the introduction of the Community Care (Direct Payments) Act in the UK. This piece of legislation introduced a mechanism that enabled local authorities to make cash payments to disabled people aged between 18 and 64 in lieu of directly provided services. The years since 1997 have seen the introduction of additional legislation resulting in direct payments now being an option for many more groups of people, including the carers of disabled children. Following the changes in the legislation, government now wishes to see local authorities significantly increasing the numbers of families that receive direct payments. This paper will report on a research project carried out within one local authority in the north‐west of England that has one of the largest numbers of carers of disabled children receiving direct payments in the UK. Using a variety of methods this paper explores how the local authority has made direct payments so widely available to carers and the effect that this has had on their own and their children’s lives.
This paper reflects upon and connects the findings of two research projects that examined the sex... more This paper reflects upon and connects the findings of two research projects that examined the sexual inequalities experienced by disabled young gay men. Using some of the data for illustrative purposes, we explore the consequences of the dominant heteronormative discursive practices that they experienced within sex education classes. Drawing on Foucault, we explore how the many silences within the particular version of sex education that these young men received resulted in internalized feelings of difference. Furthermore, we argue that such educational experiences construct ‘certainties’ that do not reflect the realities of young disabled gay men.
Book Chapters by Craig Blyth
We want to begin this Chapter by acknowledging it is a sensitive area of research and is, more of... more We want to begin this Chapter by acknowledging it is a sensitive area of research and is, more often, an area of the social world that is ignored, or believed not to occur. We had been working on a review of literature to help us put in a funding application on this topic. We found there was clear evidence that within the UK there are intellectually disabled people either selling sexual services or, in some cases, being sold for sex. This concerns us because we know it is a largely hidden topic and we are very concerned about sexual health. The main body of this chapter looks at the gaps in our current knowledge and at some of the themes arising from previous research and literature. We conclude by looking at the implications of these findings for intellectually disabled people who are active in the sex industry and for those people and services that support them.
This chapter discusses a range of issues confronting gay learning disabled men in the UK. The cha... more This chapter discusses a range of issues confronting gay learning disabled men in the UK. The chapter goes on to explore how one group of such men set up a peer support group in the hope of supporting each other to challenge and overcome some of these difficulties
Editorials by Craig Blyth
This journal has been publishing articles related to the lives of people with learning disabiliti... more This journal has been publishing articles related to the lives of people with learning disabilities over a number of decades. In recent times, some of these articles have been written in partnership. As an inclusive group of researchers at the University of Manchester, we are pleased whenever we see research with and by people with learning disabilities rather than on people with learning disabilities (see our views on this in Docherty et al. 2005).
However, we also think it is time that people with learning disabilities became involved in more than just co-writing and research. We wanted to see a partnership approach to the whole process of peer review and publishing research. We bear witness to learning disabled researchers finding it difficult to access their rightful place in discussion within academia despite government departments, research councils and the larger charities demanding that inclusive/service user involved, or partnership research, is the ethical way of working. With this idea in mind, we met with the editor of the journal, Professor Duncan Mitchell to ask whether our group could, for the first time in the UK, complete the whole process for a special edition of the journal: that is, to peer review articles and write the editorial in partnership. We were very pleased that he was open to our request and allowed us the space to put the idea into practice. This ‘special edition’ is the result.
It is a surprisingly lengthy process. We had our first meeting with Professor Mitchell in December 2010 where we mapped out what it was we wanted to do and set dates for each stage of the process to be completed. Every step of preparation for publishing this edition has been worked at together by members of the Partnership Steering Group. You can read more about our group by reading the interview with Andrew Holman.
We put out a call for papers in February 2011, which asked for inclusive researchers to send in papers on the ‘Research and work of people with learning disabilities and their allies and supporters’. The papers were to be written in partnership with or by people with learning disabilities and based on inclusive research projects. We were delighted with the number of submissions received (far too many to include in this edition and therefore some papers will be published in later editions of the journal).
Once the papers were received, they were anonymously peer reviewed by members of the Partnership Steering Group working together as a team. We held a series of peer review meetings over the summer of 2011 to enable us to do this. The papers we accepted were then returned to the authors with comments and requests for amendments. Once the amended papers were received and peer reviewed again, they were included in this edition. The process of peer reviewing and making decisions about the articles submitted was not an easy one, and we think we have learnt some important lessons that we would like to share with you. These include:
•The terms ‘inclusive’ and ‘partnership’ research mean different things to different people; we received some papers that had not fully involved people with learning disabilities as researchers, but the authors still called their research ‘inclusive’. This worried us as it could mean that some non-disabled researchers believe they are doing inclusive research when they are only involving people with learning disabilities in very small parts of the projects. It is therefore good to point out exactly what the ‘sharing’ or ‘inclusive’ process is so that nothing is hidden from the readers view. This links into an idea that Elizabeth Harkness came up with about ‘rejecting research’ (Townson et al. 2004:73). She said that in any place where learning disabled researchers were not included, they were actively being rejected.
•Some of the papers involved topics that were very sensitive (for example about cancer or abuse), and some of our group found this quite upsetting. We think useful learning disability research is about things that impact on the lives of people with learning disabilities and that in groups of inclusive researchers, some topics will affect particular individuals more than others. Members of our group supported each other when we were reading articles about sensitive issues. We had quite a discussion about it because there was an alternative view that people with learning disabilities must not be shielded from important events. Lou said that coping with distress is a real-life situation that requires appropriate and effective support. If a member of our group found a paper difficult and wanted to step out of that review, then their decision was respected.
•Even though we asked that all the articles were accessible (and some authors have used graphics), there were papers that used lots of long and complicated words. We discussed whether we should ask for these words to be removed or explained more clearly. Again, there were different views about it within our group. Some of us thought they should be removed and others thought if we removed all the complicated words, it could be patronising to people with learning disabilities, creating a barrier to learning about new ideas. When we came across these words, we checked each time whether to ask for them to be explained or replaced. In relation to this, Richard pointed out he had learned that ‘epistemology’ was not the theory of getting drunk!
•We noticed how some of the articles talked about people with learning disabilities as if they were all the same, that is, just one big group of similar people. We were surprised about this and asked some authors to remember that just because people have a learning disability, it does not mean they are not all different individuals with different experiences, ages, genders, sexualities and races. We think it is important that if one person has a learning disability, they do not think that they can talk for all people with learning disabilities. Similarly, non-disabled academics should not claim that their research findings apply to all people with learning disabilities.
We hope we have been able to give you a taste of some of our discussions. We recognise there are no easy answers and that such work needs to continue and develop in order to improve. This special edition demonstrates that working together can be interesting, surprising, fun, hard work and allow everyone a chance to learn a lot from each other. We hope this will be the first of many more times that people with learning disabilities are involved in making decisions about the quality and relevance of learning disability research.
The rich variety of articles included in this edition demonstrates a lively, growing and global partnership research community. The first article about Heidi and Philip was based on their experiences within the Canadian education system, following their transition from high school into the University of Manitoba. Their evidence-based ‘advice’ at the end of the article makes compelling reading especially in regard to the impact of a special school education. Paul Hughes’ auto-ethnographic account of understanding Aspergers Syndrome provided a unique insight into the complexities of communication alongside reflecting upon various approaches of teaching and learning around some key events in his life. This was followed by ‘Yes! I am researcher’. This paper was a very positive account of a personal research journey reflecting the experience of working in partnership where the research was focused on the everyday use of literacy skills in Australia.
There were a number of interesting group articles that looked at relationships in Ireland, how people liked to live in Malta and how having friends helped you when you were stuck, from the Midlands, UK. These three projects covered significant issues in people lives and allow the self advocacy of people with learning disabilities to be heard through their constructive research approaches.
Very sensitive topics were addressed. ‘Doing it together’ focused on the issue of cancer and breaking bad news where, similar to the Irish paper, focus groups were used. A concern arising from a number of the studies in this edition related to problems with ‘gatekeepers’ in learning disability research. Interestingly, the article, ‘Finding the Words’, used forum theatre to approach the topic of abuse in a creative and unthreatening manner. ‘Checking up on DES’ focused on Annual Health Checks in Oxfordshire UK, where learning disabled researchers set out to discover why the take up of such checks had been so low.
Each of these articles shares creativity and imagination in how to make research relevant and useful to the lives of people with learning disabilities. It has been a great pleasure for us to have had the opportunity to read about these studies and put the special edition together. We very much hope you enjoy the results.
Professional Journals by Craig Blyth
Learning Disability Today 2010 10 14 16, Jun 1, 2010
Reports by Craig Blyth
Doctoral Thesis by Craig Blyth
Thesis University of Manchester 2009, 2009
Drawing on Badiou’s writing, we develop new insights on some central notions of the discourse on ... more Drawing on Badiou’s writing, we develop new insights on some central notions of the discourse on “disability.” We offer eight agonistic, intersecting trajectories addressing these concepts. Drawing on authorial voices, we criticize the grammatical and rhetorical maneuvers we have previously undertaken as we represent ourselves aiming for forms of participatory engagement, thus offering both critique and self-critique. Previous poststructuralist accounts in this area have drawn on “philosophers of difference,” but mainly Deleuze and Guattari. This piece offers innovation in harnessing aspects of Badiou’s thinking to issues surrounding “discourses of disability” and notions of the research “self” in its various “impersonations.”
This paper details the work of a group of learning disabled people (people with intellectual disa... more This paper details the work of a group of learning disabled people (people with intellectual disabilities) who contribute to the teaching of students undertaking a degree program at one of the UK's most elite universities. Traditional notions relating to knowledge production within academia are examined and we demonstrate how the participation of learning disabled people in classroom teaching challenges these. Drawing on the work of Freire (1972) the paper demonstrates how co-teaching by learning disabled people has a transformative impact on educational experiences. Finally, the current changes impacting the UK higher education sector are detailed and we explore how these changes are negatively impacting on courses that seek to move away from traditional approaches to pedagogy.
1997 saw the introduction of the Community Care (Direct Payments) Act in the UK. This piece of le... more 1997 saw the introduction of the Community Care (Direct Payments) Act in the UK. This piece of legislation introduced a mechanism that enabled local authorities to make cash payments to disabled people aged between 18 and 64 in lieu of directly provided services. The years since 1997 have seen the introduction of additional legislation resulting in direct payments now being an option for many more groups of people, including the carers of disabled children. Following the changes in the legislation, government now wishes to see local authorities significantly increasing the numbers of families that receive direct payments. This paper will report on a research project carried out within one local authority in the north‐west of England that has one of the largest numbers of carers of disabled children receiving direct payments in the UK. Using a variety of methods this paper explores how the local authority has made direct payments so widely available to carers and the effect that this has had on their own and their children’s lives.
This paper reflects upon and connects the findings of two research projects that examined the sex... more This paper reflects upon and connects the findings of two research projects that examined the sexual inequalities experienced by disabled young gay men. Using some of the data for illustrative purposes, we explore the consequences of the dominant heteronormative discursive practices that they experienced within sex education classes. Drawing on Foucault, we explore how the many silences within the particular version of sex education that these young men received resulted in internalized feelings of difference. Furthermore, we argue that such educational experiences construct ‘certainties’ that do not reflect the realities of young disabled gay men.
We want to begin this Chapter by acknowledging it is a sensitive area of research and is, more of... more We want to begin this Chapter by acknowledging it is a sensitive area of research and is, more often, an area of the social world that is ignored, or believed not to occur. We had been working on a review of literature to help us put in a funding application on this topic. We found there was clear evidence that within the UK there are intellectually disabled people either selling sexual services or, in some cases, being sold for sex. This concerns us because we know it is a largely hidden topic and we are very concerned about sexual health. The main body of this chapter looks at the gaps in our current knowledge and at some of the themes arising from previous research and literature. We conclude by looking at the implications of these findings for intellectually disabled people who are active in the sex industry and for those people and services that support them.
This chapter discusses a range of issues confronting gay learning disabled men in the UK. The cha... more This chapter discusses a range of issues confronting gay learning disabled men in the UK. The chapter goes on to explore how one group of such men set up a peer support group in the hope of supporting each other to challenge and overcome some of these difficulties
This journal has been publishing articles related to the lives of people with learning disabiliti... more This journal has been publishing articles related to the lives of people with learning disabilities over a number of decades. In recent times, some of these articles have been written in partnership. As an inclusive group of researchers at the University of Manchester, we are pleased whenever we see research with and by people with learning disabilities rather than on people with learning disabilities (see our views on this in Docherty et al. 2005).
However, we also think it is time that people with learning disabilities became involved in more than just co-writing and research. We wanted to see a partnership approach to the whole process of peer review and publishing research. We bear witness to learning disabled researchers finding it difficult to access their rightful place in discussion within academia despite government departments, research councils and the larger charities demanding that inclusive/service user involved, or partnership research, is the ethical way of working. With this idea in mind, we met with the editor of the journal, Professor Duncan Mitchell to ask whether our group could, for the first time in the UK, complete the whole process for a special edition of the journal: that is, to peer review articles and write the editorial in partnership. We were very pleased that he was open to our request and allowed us the space to put the idea into practice. This ‘special edition’ is the result.
It is a surprisingly lengthy process. We had our first meeting with Professor Mitchell in December 2010 where we mapped out what it was we wanted to do and set dates for each stage of the process to be completed. Every step of preparation for publishing this edition has been worked at together by members of the Partnership Steering Group. You can read more about our group by reading the interview with Andrew Holman.
We put out a call for papers in February 2011, which asked for inclusive researchers to send in papers on the ‘Research and work of people with learning disabilities and their allies and supporters’. The papers were to be written in partnership with or by people with learning disabilities and based on inclusive research projects. We were delighted with the number of submissions received (far too many to include in this edition and therefore some papers will be published in later editions of the journal).
Once the papers were received, they were anonymously peer reviewed by members of the Partnership Steering Group working together as a team. We held a series of peer review meetings over the summer of 2011 to enable us to do this. The papers we accepted were then returned to the authors with comments and requests for amendments. Once the amended papers were received and peer reviewed again, they were included in this edition. The process of peer reviewing and making decisions about the articles submitted was not an easy one, and we think we have learnt some important lessons that we would like to share with you. These include:
•The terms ‘inclusive’ and ‘partnership’ research mean different things to different people; we received some papers that had not fully involved people with learning disabilities as researchers, but the authors still called their research ‘inclusive’. This worried us as it could mean that some non-disabled researchers believe they are doing inclusive research when they are only involving people with learning disabilities in very small parts of the projects. It is therefore good to point out exactly what the ‘sharing’ or ‘inclusive’ process is so that nothing is hidden from the readers view. This links into an idea that Elizabeth Harkness came up with about ‘rejecting research’ (Townson et al. 2004:73). She said that in any place where learning disabled researchers were not included, they were actively being rejected.
•Some of the papers involved topics that were very sensitive (for example about cancer or abuse), and some of our group found this quite upsetting. We think useful learning disability research is about things that impact on the lives of people with learning disabilities and that in groups of inclusive researchers, some topics will affect particular individuals more than others. Members of our group supported each other when we were reading articles about sensitive issues. We had quite a discussion about it because there was an alternative view that people with learning disabilities must not be shielded from important events. Lou said that coping with distress is a real-life situation that requires appropriate and effective support. If a member of our group found a paper difficult and wanted to step out of that review, then their decision was respected.
•Even though we asked that all the articles were accessible (and some authors have used graphics), there were papers that used lots of long and complicated words. We discussed whether we should ask for these words to be removed or explained more clearly. Again, there were different views about it within our group. Some of us thought they should be removed and others thought if we removed all the complicated words, it could be patronising to people with learning disabilities, creating a barrier to learning about new ideas. When we came across these words, we checked each time whether to ask for them to be explained or replaced. In relation to this, Richard pointed out he had learned that ‘epistemology’ was not the theory of getting drunk!
•We noticed how some of the articles talked about people with learning disabilities as if they were all the same, that is, just one big group of similar people. We were surprised about this and asked some authors to remember that just because people have a learning disability, it does not mean they are not all different individuals with different experiences, ages, genders, sexualities and races. We think it is important that if one person has a learning disability, they do not think that they can talk for all people with learning disabilities. Similarly, non-disabled academics should not claim that their research findings apply to all people with learning disabilities.
We hope we have been able to give you a taste of some of our discussions. We recognise there are no easy answers and that such work needs to continue and develop in order to improve. This special edition demonstrates that working together can be interesting, surprising, fun, hard work and allow everyone a chance to learn a lot from each other. We hope this will be the first of many more times that people with learning disabilities are involved in making decisions about the quality and relevance of learning disability research.
The rich variety of articles included in this edition demonstrates a lively, growing and global partnership research community. The first article about Heidi and Philip was based on their experiences within the Canadian education system, following their transition from high school into the University of Manitoba. Their evidence-based ‘advice’ at the end of the article makes compelling reading especially in regard to the impact of a special school education. Paul Hughes’ auto-ethnographic account of understanding Aspergers Syndrome provided a unique insight into the complexities of communication alongside reflecting upon various approaches of teaching and learning around some key events in his life. This was followed by ‘Yes! I am researcher’. This paper was a very positive account of a personal research journey reflecting the experience of working in partnership where the research was focused on the everyday use of literacy skills in Australia.
There were a number of interesting group articles that looked at relationships in Ireland, how people liked to live in Malta and how having friends helped you when you were stuck, from the Midlands, UK. These three projects covered significant issues in people lives and allow the self advocacy of people with learning disabilities to be heard through their constructive research approaches.
Very sensitive topics were addressed. ‘Doing it together’ focused on the issue of cancer and breaking bad news where, similar to the Irish paper, focus groups were used. A concern arising from a number of the studies in this edition related to problems with ‘gatekeepers’ in learning disability research. Interestingly, the article, ‘Finding the Words’, used forum theatre to approach the topic of abuse in a creative and unthreatening manner. ‘Checking up on DES’ focused on Annual Health Checks in Oxfordshire UK, where learning disabled researchers set out to discover why the take up of such checks had been so low.
Each of these articles shares creativity and imagination in how to make research relevant and useful to the lives of people with learning disabilities. It has been a great pleasure for us to have had the opportunity to read about these studies and put the special edition together. We very much hope you enjoy the results.
Learning Disability Today 2010 10 14 16, Jun 1, 2010
Thesis University of Manchester 2009, 2009