When Penny Llewellyn produced a research report she thought it ticked all the right boxes in terms of being accessible to people with learning disabilities. But according to this section of the target audience she still had some lessons to learn…

People with learning disabilities are increasingly participating in research and may therefore require ‘accessible’ information before and after the study. Twenty three such people were involved as key participants in my research into the advocacy role of learning disability nurses. They took part in focus groups where they defined advocacy, discussed the circumstances in which they might require advocacy support and considered who might advocate for them or support them in self advocacy and how this should be done. Information from these groups was used as a basis for subsequent stages of my study in which learning disability nurses compared and contrasted their own definitions of advocacy with those of people with learning disabilities and made a detailed exploration of their advocacy role for their clients.