We are delighted to announce the publication of our Everyday Decisions project reports, detailing the Research Findings from the Everyday Decisions Project. On our research findings page, you’ll find a full report, an easyread report and a research summary.
As you will see if you look at the project report, we found that a great deal of very good practice is already taking place in supporting disabled people to make their own everyday decisions and choices. We were impressed with the range of strategies used by care professionals to facilitate choice, and to support decisions. Our findings confirm that with appropriate support many people, including people with quite severe impairments and limited communication skills, can exercise choice, and express their preferences.
We found that when decisions were thought to be more complicated, for example involving medical, legal or financial matters, these supported decision-making strategies were less well used. From our research with care professionals and disabled people, we think that some of the techniques that are used in everyday care and support practice could be used in more formal settings to support decision-making in more difficult areas.
In our project report, we have made a number of policy, practice and law reform recommendations. These include areas where more training or awareness raising campaigns might help, suggestions for changes to the Mental Capacity Act Code of Practice, and some recommendations for law reform. We also identified some areas where more research would be helpful. These include exploring how banks and financial institutions support their intellectually disabled customers, making legal decisions about the future (e.g., wills, power of attorney, and advance decisions), and supporting medical decisions.
Please read the research findings, share them with others you think would be interested, and feel free to contact us if you would like more detail and information, or to provide us with feedback on the report.