Westminster Health Forum – Improving care for people with learning disabilities (May, 2016: London, UK)

Seminar Title: Improving Care for People With Learning Disabilities – Commissioning, Regulation And Reducing Hospital Admissions

Date: Wednesday, 11^th May 2016

Place: Sixty One Whitehall, London SW1A 2ET

 **This event is CPD certified**

 Guest of Honour: Dr Dominic Slowie, National Clinical Director for Learning Disabilities, NHS England and Chair, North East and Cumbria Learning Disability Network

This timely seminar will provide an opportunity to assess future policy priorities for people with learning disabilities and/or autism across health and social care. Delegates will consider key issues outlined in NHS England, ADASS and the LGA’s Building the Right Support plan, which aims to reduce the reliance on inpatient care, establish a new service model by 2019 and create joined-up Transforming Care Partnerships for health and social care commissioners locally. Further sessions focus on plans outlined in the Department of Health response to the No Voice Unheard, No Right Ignored consultation, which included proposals for a named social worker and potential amendments to regulations in the Mental Health Act 1983. The agenda also looks at next steps for developing the workforce, and challenges for integrating and personalising care for people with learning disabilities through the use of personal budgets and the Integrated Personal Commissioning programme.

For more information, including our speakers, please click here.

Now Booking: Disability Studies Student Society Symposium (Liverpool Hope University, UK: June, 2016)

The Disability Studies student society symposium at Liverpool Hope University hopes to bring together students across the North-West to share, discuss and advise on research methodologies in disability studies. The symposium is open to students, both undergraduate and postgraduate, to explore a range of innovative and creative methodologies within the growing field of disability studies.

This is a free event, however for catering purposes please confirm your attendance via the registration form which can be found here.

We invite submissions of abstracts of up to 300 words for paper presentations that detail methodological approaches to research projects, both those that have been completed and those that are currently underway.

The student symposium will be held at Liverpool Hope University on Wednesday 22nd June 2016. A full schedule for the symposium will be updated and available shortly as will be details for registration.

Abstracts of up to 300 words should be submitted for consideration by 29th April 2016 to12000935@hope.ac.uk Presenters will be informed via email by 22^nd May 2016.

For more information please follow this link https://studentsymposiumliverpoolhope.wordpress.com/

PhD studentship: Children with Learning Disabilities as Digital Audiences (Univ. of Glasgow, UK)

AHRC funded PhD studentship at the University of Glasgow in collaboration with BBC Scotland: “Children with Learning Disabilities as Digital Audiences”

Applications are invited for a full PhD studentship in Film and Television Studies at the University of Glasgow to work in collaboration with the Children’s Department at BBC Scotland. The aim of the project is to explore the provision and design of digital media by the BBC for older children with learning disabilities. This exciting opportunity will require the researcher to divide his or her time between the University of Glasgow and the Children’s Department within BBC Scotland (situated in the Pacific Quay in Glasgow). The student will have unique access to the Children’s Department, working amongst BBC staff to capture a sense of the existing provision of digital content for children with learning disabilities and the ways in which BBC Scotland engage with this audience. The project will then continue through a small scale qualitative study that will capture how, why and when digital media is used, interpreted and enjoyed by members of this specific audience. The student will then return to the BBC with their research findings and work alongside colleagues to develop a ‘pitch’ for the design or redesign of digital content that will allow the BBC to respond directly to the needs and desires of their targeted audience.

The specific question this project poses is how we might re-imagine content for differently-abled audiences that is appropriate to both their cognitive abilities and their personal/social needs and desires. (Aims and Objectives are posted below)

A supervisory team from across both institutions will oversee this work and full research training (including audience research skills if required) will be offered. The team will include Dr. Amy Holdsworth and Professor Karen Lury from the University of Glasgow and Ms. Sara Harkins (Head of Children’s BBC Scotland) with relevant support from professional colleagues within BBC Scotland.

he studentship is funded for three years to commence in October 2016 and covers tuition fees at the Home/EU rate. Home students and EU students who have lived in the UK for 3 years prior to the award will also receive a maintenance bursary (stipend) of approx. £14,296 for 16-17 plus an additional £550 travel allowance. In addition, the student is eligible to receive up to £1,000 a year from the BBC to support travel or other expenses directly related to the doctoral research, and will be given use of a desk and computer at the University of Glasgow and appropriate access and resources at the BBC. All AHRC Collaborative PhD students automatically become part of the UK-wide Collaborative Doctoral Partnership development scheme which will provide training in a range of skills needed for research within museums, archives, galleries and heritage organisations.

Informal enquiries are welcome.

Please write to Dr. Amy Holdsworth (Amy.Holdsworth@glasgow.ac.uk ) in the first instance.

Candidates ideally should have:

• A good 2.1 Honours (or B.A.) degree in a relevant Arts or Social Science discipline.
• A Masters degree in a related discipline or appropriate professional experience within children’s media, digital media, audience development, working with children and young people with disabilities.
• A good understanding of contemporary Children’s Television, digital media and issues and debates within disability studies
• An interest in, or first-hand knowledge of, audience research. • Applicants should be able to demonstrate strong research capabilities and be fluent in spoken and written English.

Applications should include: • A statement of no more than 1,000 words indicating what skills and experience you have that will be relevant for the project. • A current CV • Degree transcripts (this may be an interim transcript if you are still studying) • An example of writing – e.g. academic essay, professional report – up to 3000 words in length • 2 academic/professional references (these may be sent directly from your referees if they would prefer)

Applications to be sent to Jeanette.Berrie@glasgow.ac.uk (Research Administrator, School of Culture and Creative Arts, University of Glasgow) with the subject line BBC CDA.

Closing Date: Wednesday 15th June 2016

Interviewees will be notified by Thursday 23^rd June and interviews will take place at the University of Glasgow on Friday 1^st July 2016.

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The Project: Through initial audience development work, colleagues at BBC Scotland have already observed the ways in which digital content designed for a young (‘pre-school’) audience is being used by older children with learning disabilities. They have recognized that while these young people may have less sophisticated ‘operational’ abilities their desire and interest in age appropriate content is not necessarily affected. In simple terms, games or interactive challenges aimed at 4-7year olds may represent an appropriate operational challenge (how to work the game, how to move about and between different parts of the page) but are inappropriate in terms of content (older children and young people are more likely to respond positively to content such as WolfBlood rather than In the Night Garden or ‘Mr. Tumble’). The project will therefore focus on this particular issue and ask how we might re-imagine content for differently-abled audiences that is appropriate to their cognitive abilities and their personal/social needs and desires.

 Aims and objectives.

The aims and objectives of this collaborative project are designed to both reflect upon and develop the BBC’s relationship with its differently abled child audience.

Aims

1. To explore the provision of content for children with learning disabilities: Initial stages of the research will explore the existing provision of digital content for children with learning disabilities and the ways in the children’s department at BBC Scotland engage with this audience (through audience development initiatives, for example). This initial ‘snapshot’ accompanied by critical investigation of academic literature on children, disability and media will form a building block for the student to design and implement a qualitative audience study.
2. To conduct a small-scale qualitative audience study of children with learning disabilities as digital audiences/users: Utilizing the appropriate methodologies (see below) the student will capture how, why and when digital media is used, interpreted and enjoyed by children with learning disabilities. This fieldwork will importantly also offer the child the opportunity to reflect upon and discuss their use of digital media (e.g. their preferences, desires, likes and dislikes).

Objectives

3. The student will disseminate research findings through traditional academic outputs and through partnership with the BBC: One of the principle objectives of the project is for the research to have an avenue of dissemination within the BBC to allow the institution to reflect upon and develop their own practices and forms of audience engagement. The links with BBC Scotland and its contacts present opportunities for the research to be accessed by other stakeholder communities and organisations (such as ‘for Scotland’s Disabled Children’ (fSDC)).
4. To implement research findings through the production of a BBC ‘pitch’: Through the student’s involvement at BBC Scotland he or she will utilise their research on this specific child audience in the development, design or redesign of games, applications or website provision for this audience.

CFP: ‘Discourses of Care: Care in Media, Medicine and Society’ (Sept. 2016; Glasgow, UK)

Event: Discourses of Care: Care in Media, Medicine and Society Conference

Location: Gilmorehill Halls, 9 University Avenue, University of Glasgow, G12 8QQ

Date: Monday 5^th – Wednesday 7^th September 2016

Deadline for proposals: Friday 3^rd June 2016

Keynote speakers:

• Prof. Eva Feder Kittay, Stony Brook University NY
• Prof. Andrew Kötting, artist and filmmaker, University for the Creative Arts

Summary: This Wellcome-funded interdisciplinary conference aims to support and foster collaborative work in relation to media and questions of care and well-being, focusing on care and care giving as critical concepts. Bringing together scholars from film and television studies, medical humanities, disability studies, and philosophy, we will debate how understandings of medical and social care are (and might be) positioned in relation to media and cultural studies. This would be a significant first step toward building inter-disciplinary alliances and driving forward work within the as yet under-determined field of ‘visual medical humanities’. The specific focus of the conference and anticipated publication/s is to explore the ways in which media do more than simply represent care and caring (although representation, of course, remains an important issue). Taking a new approach, the conference will explore how media forms and media practices (the creation, exhibition and reception of media) may act as a mode of care. Thus we wish to explore how different kinds of media programming, media technologies and media practices present opportunities in which care is manifest as both an ‘attitude’ and a ‘disposition’ (Feder Kittay).The event will underpin at least one multi-authored publication. Through this conference we will explore the politics and ethics of care-relationships and contest binary understandings of autonomy and dependency amongst individuals with cognitive and physical disabilities, carers and medical professionals. We are particularly interested in the nexus of youth (the ‘child’), age (the ‘aged’) and disability as a way of opening up alliances and challenges to popular cultural notions and representations of care and dependency. We are now looking for academics, care providers, and creative practitioners of all levels, periods, and fields to submit proposals for 20 minute conference papers.

We invite papers on topics that include (but are not limited to):

• Relationships between care and media
• Definitions of care in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries
• Autobiographical representations of and reactions to care
• Disability studies approaches to care and dependency
• Media practices and outputs as modes of care
• Care and the visual medical humanities
• Adaptive technologies and care
• Spectatorship, care, and media
• Care, media, and children
• Care, media, and ageing
• Use of media in health education and rehabilitation
• Consumer ‘choice’ and ‘autonomy’ in popular culture
• Screen cultures in our ‘institutions of care’ (e.g. the NHS and the BBC).

Please email an abstract of up to 300 words and a short bio (100-200 words) to the conference organisers (discoursesofcare@gmail.com) by Friday 3^rd June 2016. The conference team will respond to proposals by Friday 10^th June 2016.

There are a limited number of travel bursaries available for postgraduate and/or early career presenters; the recipients of these grants will be asked to write a short reflection on the conference, which will be published on the Glasgow Medical Humanities Research Centre blog, and the conference website.

If you wish to be considered for one of the travel bursaries, please email us for an application form and submit it with your abstract and bio. We will contact all respondents on the outcome of their proposal by the end of June 2016. Thanks to funding from the Wellcome Trust, this conference will be free to attend.

The conference venue, the Gilmorehill Building, is fully accessible, and the conference will include accommodations such as pre-circulated papers and discussion topics, ending with an interactive roundtable discussion. For more information on access, transport, and the venue please visit our website. If you have any questions, please email the conference team at discoursesofcare@gmail.com, or contact us via @CareDiscourses.

Conference team: Prof. Karen Lury (Film and TV), Dr Amy Holdsworth (Film and TV), and Dr Hannah Tweed (English Literature).

Seminar: ‘Becoming a SENDCO: making sense of changing professional identities (April, 2006: Sheffield, UK)

Title: Becoming a SENDCO: making sense of changing professional identities.

Date: Tuesday, 5^th April 2016

Time: 12.00pm – 1.00pm

Venue: Room 9006, Cantor Building, Sheffield Hallam University

Description: Sheila Sharpe will outline her current research study which investigates the changes that Special Educational Needs and Disability Coordinators (SENDCos) may experience as they begin to inhabit the new role of specialist in ‘special education’ and how this new role (and new ‘specialist’ identity) influences or changes their pedagogical thinking and practice. The study seeks to investigate how the identity of a teacher develops into the identity of a specialist teacher. The desired outcome of the research is to provide insights into the interrelationship between external and internal factors in the formation of SENDCo identity. This will enable an understanding of the particular significance of SENDCo identity formation in the role of the ‘specialist practitioner’.

The research study’s broader aims are to:

1. gain an understanding of the particular significance of SENDCo identity
2. uncover some of the discourses SENDCos use to narrate and make sense of their role
3. uncover the factors that influence the establishment of a SENDco identity

 

The aims will be achieved by using the qualitative methodology of narrative enquiry. This form of narrative enquiry will allow the researcher to hear how the SENDCos construct meaning from their perceived role and their personal belief systems and investigate what is it that marks the SENDCO out as different and enables them to take on a different and specialist identity.

It’s not necessary to book please attend if you can.

Disability Studies Student Society Symposium (Liverpool Hope University, UK: June, 2016)

The Disability Studies Student Society Symposium at Liverpool Hope University hopes to bring together students across the North-West (and beyond) to share, discuss and advise on research methodologies in disability studies.

We invite submissions of abstracts of up to 300 words for paper presentations that detail methodological approaches to research projects, both those that have been completed and those that are currently underway. We are not expecting polished papers, rather we want to create a safe and open space to share ideas, concerns and questions.

The symposium is open to students, both undergraduate and postgraduate. We are interested in hearing about a range of innovative and creative methodologies within the growing field of disability studies.

The student symposium will be held at Liverpool Hope University on Wednesday 22^nd June 2016. A full schedule for the symposium will be updated and available shortly as will be details for registration.

Abstracts of up to 300 words should be submitted for consideration by 22^nd April 2016 to 12000935@hope.ac.uk. Presenters will be informed via email by 22^nd May 2016.

For more information regarding submission, or general information concerning the symposium please contact: Leah Burch – Email: 12000935@hope.ac.uk

CFP: Disability and Shakespearean Theatre Symposium

Where?: Sir Alwyn Williams Building, Lilybank Gardens, University of Glasgow, G12 8QQ

When?: 9.45am-5pm, Wednesday 20^th April 2016

Attendance fee?: £25 full, £15 concession, free for BSA members

What?:  This symposium draws together growing research interest in disability studies and Shakespearean theatre. In discussing the depiction, treatment, and uses of disability in Shakespeare’s work (and that of his contemporaries) alongside analysis of the role of disability in staging of his plays, we hope to encourage interaction between creative practitioners, historians, and literary scholars. Playwright and disability studies scholar Prof. Chris Mounsey (University of Winchester) will give the keynote address on “VariAbility in Shakespeare”, in which he will explore alternative ways of responding to the question of the existence of disability in the Early Modern period, and to one of Shakespeare’s most infamous characters: Richard III. Following the symposium, Glasgow-based playwright Molly Ziegler (Notes, Getting it (Back)) has agreed to premier her new play, Let Her Come In. Let Her Come In is a one act rewriting of Hamlet, focused on mental illness, gender, and disability.

We are now looking for academics, actors, and creative practitioners of all levels, periods, and fields to submit proposals for 20 minute conference papers, or 5-10 minute position papers for discussion. We invite papers on topics that include (but are not limited to):

• Disability in contemporary adaptations of Shakespeare
• 21^st-century understanding of (and challenges to) disability on the Shakespearean stage
• VariAbility and categorisations of disability on stage (especially as applied to mental and physical disabilities)
• Staging disability (actors, prostheses, costumes, etc.)
• Disabled actors and staging Shakespeare
• Signed Shakespeare, captioning, and assistive technologies
• Disabled scholars’ experience of Shakespeare in performance and the academy
• Cultural and historical concepts of disability in Shakespearean texts
• The language of disability in Shakespeare
• Challenging the idea of Shakespeare as savant
• Disability and Shakespeare’s collaborators and contemporaries
• Disability studies theory and Shakespearean theatre

Further Details?: Please email an abstract of up to 300 words and a short bio to the symposium organisers (disabilityandshakespeare@gmail.com) by Friday 15^th January 2016. Please indicate if your proposal is for a position paper. There are two small travel bursaries available for postgraduate/early career presenters; the recipients of these grants will be asked to write a short reflection on the symposium, which will be published on the BSA website, the Glasgow Medical Humanities Research Centre blog, and the symposium website.

If you wish to be considered for one of the postgraduate bursaries, please email us for an application form and submit it with your abstract and bio. We will contact all respondents on the outcome of their proposal by Friday 22^nd January 2016. Thanks to funding from the British Shakespeare Association, this symposium will be free to attend for BSA members. Symposium attendees are welcome to join the BSA in advance of the event or on the day.

The symposium venue, the Sir Alwyn Williams Building, is fully accessible, and the symposium will include accommodations such as pre-circulated papers and discussion topics, ending with an interactive roundtable discussion. For more information on access, transport, and the venue please visit our website. If you have any questions, please email the symposium team at disabilityandshakespeare@gmail.com, or contact us via @Disability&SS.

Research Project: Social Security and Family Life

Social Security and Family Life Research Project

The University of Birmingham Business School is carrying out a two-year research project about the long-term experiences of families where one or more family members receives, has recently received, or has applied for Disability Living Allowance or Personal Independence Payment. We are interested in:

1. People’s experiences, whether or not the claim has resulted in the award of the benefit.
2. How individuals and families are affected by social security entitlements and any changes to them.
3. Experiences of any other allowances which may have been received (such as Incapacity Benefit or Employment and Support Allowance).

Participation would be via an interview that would normally last about 45 minutes (face-to-face or by phone). Each person who is interviewed will receive a £10 voucher and will be a part of an important research project that helps raise awareness and understanding of how changes to social security benefits affect disabled people and people with long term health conditions.

If you could pass on this information to anyone you think might be interested in participating, we’d greatly appreciate it.

Please also see our website www.birmingham.ac.uk/social-security-and-family-life for more information about the project, our contact details, and to contact us directly.

Thank you, and if you have any questions or would like to talk more about the project we would be very pleased to hear from you. You can email us here: disabilityresearch@contacts.bham.ac.uk

Postcolonial Studies Association Convention (7th–9th Sept. 2015: University of Leicester, UK)

The first Postcolonial Studies Association Convention aims to be as interdisciplinary as possible – we wondered if any of our Disability Studies friends were interested in attending…

Postcolonial Studies Association Convention at the University of Leicester on 7th–9th September 2015

The first PSA convention will be held at the University of Leicester (UK), from 7 to 9 September 2015. Contributions from academics and postgraduates investigating any area of postcolonialism from any disciplinary, cross- or interdisciplinary perspective are warmly invited.

Confirmed keynote speakers:

• Professor Paul Gilroy (King’s College London)
• Professor John McLeod (University of Leeds)
• (Other keynotes to be confirmed)

The 2015 PSA Convention Special Topic is Diasporas

Proposals for panels and papers on the theme of diasporas will be particularly welcome. Movement —be it of culture, capital or the human movement involved in colonialism, slavery, indentured labour, or postcolonial migration to former colonial metropoli— has always been central to postcolonial studies.

Diaspora has been one of the key concepts of postcolonial studies within this context of individual and collective journeys. Within contemporary analysis, diasporas have tended to be explored in terms of ethnicity, race, nationality, and even religion. However, diaspora has sometimes been accused of perpetuating histories of colonial inequality by failing to differentiate between precarious migration motivated by exploitation and the more economically privileged transnational movements of the global bourgeoisie. The study of human movement during colonial and postcolonial times has taken a number of shapes across the humanities and social sciences through the study of diaspora, migration, transnationalism, cosmopolitanism and globalisation. It is this theme of movement that the conference special topic will address. What social, historical and linguistic configurations does the study of diasporas privilege? Which ones does it ignore? How has diaspora come to include different motivations of migration beyond the more familiar ones of ethnic discrimination and economic hardship? How has the diasporic experience been represented and studied?

The convention will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing & its ongoing partnership with the PSA.

Format: Individual 20-min. academic papers, panels, performances or poster presentations.

Please send abstracts of individual presentations (250 words) or panels of 3 (500 words) with a brief biographical note of participants (2-3 sentences) to psa2015convention@gmail.com

Deadline for abstracts: 28 February 2015. Decisions communicated by the end of March 2015.

Reminder: Next DRF Seminar – Weds. 10th December 2014: 10am-12pm

Details for the next DRF seminar are below. All welcome. And if you’d like to present at an upcoming seminar, please do let us know – available slots can be seen here.

Wednesday 10^th December, 10am-12pm, Room 100009 (Arundel Building, Sheffield Hallam University)

Slot 1: Joanna Baker-Rogers: Asperger Syndrome – experiencing the phenomenon of friendship (Sheffield Hallam University, UK)

Abstract: As the mother of a son with the label of Asperger Syndrome (AS), I have observed my son enjoying friendships with peers both on the autism spectrum and non-disabled. These observations would appear to challenge the diagnostic view that persons with AS do not enjoy friendship. Instead they prefer solitary activities and being alone. This conceptualisation of the autism spectrum embodies the medical model of disability and in-particular the Triad of Impairments (Wing 1995). The literature is dominated by understandings of friendship of non-disabled people (O’Dell, Bertildotter Rosqvist and Brownlow (2013). There is little consideration of potential autistic friendships from a social model of disability perspective. Instead the focus is on the failure of persons with AS to aspire to and maintain friendships with the aim of improving themselves to experience friendship from a non-disabled perspective.  I have come to question whether concepts of friendship are being imposed upon persons with AS that have little meaning for them, are disabling and embody the concepts of normalcy (Abberley 1991) and ableism (Campbell 2012).

The medical model of disability view of persons with AS not being interested in friendship needs to be problematised. This presentation of my research critiques these misconceptions that have emerged as a result of social barriers in society. My research aims to capture the different and valid lived experience of friendship for persons with AS that challenges the conceptualisation of the autism spectrum as a tragedy for the individual and their family.

Slot 2: Chris Hill: Special School Sporting Experiences: Listening to Student Researchers Labelled with Behavioural, Emotional and Social Difficulties (Sheffield Hallam University, UK)

Abstract: TBC.