Methods

This project explores how social workers can be better supported to include the intimate lives of autistic people and people with learning disabilities in Care Act assessments and reviews.

We aim to co-produce practical outputs that directly inform social work practice in England, including free assessment tools, guidance documents training, and evidence of good practice. To achieve this, the project is organised into two work packages outlined below:

Work Package One

This work package is split into three parts:

1

Interviews and Focus Groups

Aim: to understand how social workers are currently approaching sex and relationships support needs in Care Act assessments, and what support they need to do this more confidently and consistently.

Participants: 25 social workers in local authorities across England

Method: we will gather richly detailed, qualitative data through interviews and focus groups. Participants are given a choice of which they would like to be involved in. Interviews last for one hour, and focus groups for 75 minutes.

Outputs: academic journal article(s)

2

Workshops

Aim: to co-create tools to support conversations around sex and relationships during Care Act assessments.

Participants: 10 autistic adults and 10 adults with learning disabilities

Methods: we will facilitate two workshops with autistic adults and adults with learning disabilities. Each workshop will involve interactive activities to understand what people with lived experience want support for people being assessed to look like.

Outputs: free tools for including sex and relationships in Care Act assessments with autistic people and people with learning disabilities, and guidance for these conversations for social workers, autistic people and people with learning disabilities. These can be found here.

3

Developing and evaluating training

Aim: to develop, deliver and evaluate training for social workers around including sex and relationships in Care Act assessments.

Participants: 80 social workers across England

Methods: the training will be evaluated using three surveys; immediately before and after the training and a follow up three months later to see how the learning is used in practice.

Outputs: a free-to-download training pack including slides, the tools developed in the workshops, reading materials and a facilitators guide so that other people can deliver the training. The training will also be developed into teaching materials appropriate for social work students.

Work Package Two

Aim: to develop case studies from three services demonstrating good practice in supporting autistic adults and adults with learning disabilities' sex and relationships support needs. The main output will be a series of professionally designed booklets showcasing these examples of good practice, to inspire and guide other local authorities and services.

We are using Stake's (2005) interpretive case study approach to highlight examples of good practice and show that local authorities can recognise, assess and commission good support for adults' sexual and intimate relationship needs.

A key element of Stake’s (2005) interpretive case study approach is flexible and inductive data collection from a range of sources to collect richly detailed data to build an in-depth understanding of the case study subject. This means that the way we approach each case study will be tailored to the site and the good practice.

Data will be collected in the following ways:

Interviews: with social workers, commissioners, care staff, leaders within the local authority, and people with lived experience who have benefitted from the support.
Resources: reviewing and analysing policies, reports and materials to build a full picture of the good practice.
Observation: in the form of short notes during visits to the local authority or service.

The Intimate Lives Matter research study represents independent research funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Research Programme for Social Care (RPSC) (NIHR208587). The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NIHR or Department of Health and Social Care.