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Research by Jonathan Wolff provided the intellectual framework for pioneering work on self-directed support in social care by In Control, a national charity whose mission is `to create a fairer society where everyone needing additional support has the right, responsibility and freedom to control that support'. Wolff's work with In Control has shaped recent government policies including the Putting People First strategy (adopted 2008), which have improved health provision generally and service provision for disabled persons in particular. The specific impacts described here are (1) shaping government policy at both a national and local level and (2) improving the health and quality of life of more than 600,000 disabled citizens and their carers by improving service delivery.
`Scrounger', `cheat', `skiver' - Disabled people are feeling increasingly threatened by how they are represented in the media. University of Glasgow research has provided strong evidence of this negative shift in media coverage of disability issues. The 2011 findings have received widespread attention, have critically informed public and political debate and have substantially shaped the work of NGOs and advocacy groups. They have provided organisations with clear research evidence to inform their campaigns by defining and quantifying misrepresentations in the media and the effects on audience perception of these issues, helping to support calls for change in public attitudes to issues of inequality.
McKeown is a major exponent of Disability Arts. Through his creative work in animation and performance he works to affect popular assumptions about disability. He seeks to affirm disability as a social construct and his work reflects, deconstructs and engages with the concepts of normalcy and the abnormal. He has become an important proponent of disability issues because of the international reach of his practice as an artist. His work stresses the pride and self-confidence of the disabled and expresses their wish to participate in, and be full members of, society. He has reached a large public and affected the terms of debate of the issues he acts as an ambassador for.
A significant contribution has been made to: a) occupational health policy debates and widening public awareness about the connections between employment environments and disease, and b) compensation struggles and campaigns to improve health and safety in the contemporary workplace, as a result of oral history research on targeting the experience of asbestos and coal mining-related diseases. This has benefitted agencies, organisations and policy-makers involved in campaigning for disease victims and those individuals, families and communities who suffer from occupational diseases — including asbestos-related ones — within Scotland, the UK and globally. There has also been a wider public impact in terms of contributing to sustainable public and community heritage.
There has long been concern about the large number of people claiming incapacity benefits in Britain. Repeated policies to reduce the caseload have had little effect. Professor Richard Berthoud has addressed the issues by exploring the interaction between disabled people's impairments and employers' expectations. He has been continuously engaged with policymakers and has influenced the policy debates about these benefits. He has made presentations to the Department for Work and Pensions and social security adjudication judges, and has provided research and advice for the Office for Disability Issues, the Equalities Review and the National Equalities Panel, and the Citizens Advice Bureau.
This research was initiated in 2003 in recognition of the neglect by museums and galleries across the UK of disability history, arts and culture. Before the research began, disabled people — comprising the UK's largest minority — were almost entirely absent from and/or misrepresented in the UK's cultural heritage institutions. Three distinct but sequential projects investigated this and, through a programme of action research:
- stimulated and supported experimentation in museum exhibition and learning practice in the UK and internationally, enabling museums and galleries to confidently engage visitors in debates surrounding disability, disability rights, hate crime and, more broadly, discrimination and societal attitudes towards physical and mental difference;
- developed new approaches to interpretation and audience engagement that have changed the ways in which general visitors and schoolchildren think about physical and mental differences and the rights and entitlements of disabled people;
- pioneered new approaches to museum practice that have informed policy and set standards for best practice not only in the UK but internationally.
Research led by Professor Mark Priestley at Leeds increased the democratic participation of policy users in the disability field and shaped public policy, law and services across the European Union (EU). Collaborative research methods provided the knowledge and skills for disabled people's organisations to change the investment priorities of European funding programmes. A seven-year programme of comparative research provided the evidence and tools for the European Commission to develop disability policies and fulfil EU treaty obligations to the United Nations. The impact pathways are based on (a) strategic partnerships with research users, (b) policy relevance in the underpinning research, and, (c) direct inputs to EU policy process. These pathways are illustrated with reference to two EU-funded projects (value in excess of €4m).
Professor David Hill has published extensively on Turner's work, highlighting Yorkshire as a landscape of international significance. His fieldwork has tracked the artist's travels through the county, locating, examining and photographing his viewpoints as they survive today.
Since 2010 a tourist promotion entitled `Discover Turner's Yorkshire' has given this work much wider public impact. Both published and digital materials have raised public awareness of the significance of the county to the artist; this has increased tourism and brought further economic and social benefits.
Anna Lawson's research into disability equality and human rights has shaped and strengthened the disability policy of the European Union (EU) and Council of Europe (CoE).
The research formed the basis of a new EU-wide system for tracking the progress being made by 34 countries in implementing the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2006 (Disability Convention).
Lawson's research also shaped the content of a CoE Recommendation (issued to its 47 Member States) on the political rights of disabled people. In particular, her research influenced the CoE's ground-breaking decision to include an explicit recognition that mental disability never justifies the deprivation of voting rights.
Research in the area of Critical Disability Studies carried out at Manchester Metropolitan University has directly led to a change in government policy on the family finding process for 4,000 children in the UK currently awaiting adoption. At both national and regional level, the research has influenced the provision of services for disabled children and their families, ranging from the commissioning of short break services to funding decisions for charity. The research has also influenced the strategy of Scope, the disability charity, with regard to resilience in disabled people's lives, and contributed to the training of teachers for children with learning disabilities.