What’s coming up for policy research at Sense?
Our Policy Research Manager, Georgina, talks us through our latest research and what’s coming soon.
Why is policy research important?
Our research on the lives, experiences and priorities of people with complex disabilities, play a vital part in our influencing work. It also helps bring to life and evidence our work to improve the lives of people with complex disabilities.
Research helps us to identify where change needs to happen and what change people would like to see.
Looking ahead to 2023 there is more for us to do!
Last year was an incredible year for our research
- We now know that there are 1.6 million people with complex disabilities in the UK, including people who are deafblind. Improving our understanding of the numbers of people with complex disabilities helps us to better understand their experiences and needs. It also helps Sense to plan how we support more people through our services.
- We launched our flagship piece of research, Potential and Possibility about the needs and aspirations of people with complex disabilities. This work has helped to underpin our influencing priorities and supported our ongoing work to raise awareness of what needs to change for people with complex disabilities.
- We have explored priority areas raised by people Sense supports including our research to show the shortage of MSI (Multi-Sensory Impairment) Teachers. MSI teachers are specially trained to tailor a deafblind child’s learning to ensure they can access their education and they can develop their skills.
- We have responded to emerging issues faced by people with complex disabilities and published research on the impact rising cost of living is having on people with complex disabilities. This has been used to support our campaigning to get the Government to do more to address the impact of cost of living on disabled people.
What’s next?
Following on from our research last year, we are continuing to build our evidence base on the lives of people with complex disabilities. We are also undertaking research that responds to what is happening externally with government policy, changes to legislation and the economy.
This year our research projects include:
- What does good look like when supporting people with complex disabilities to find work? Our findings from last year’s Potential and Possibility research highlighted some issues we wanted to find out more about. We have been working in partnership with our employment service. This research will be published in April and will help us with the next stage of our influencing around employment. This is well timed after the government published their disability and employment white paper last week.
- We are repeating our Potential and Possibility research. We launched our survey last week and are looking forward to people engaging and sharing their experiences to help inform our work.
- Finding out more about how cost of living continues to impact disabled people. We know that the cost of living crisis isn’t going away so we will be continuing to carry out research on this. We have a regular survey with people Sense supports to help us to understand this more. There are also more national datasets that we’ll be using to help us, like the work being carried out by the Office of National Statistics (ONS).
This is just a sneak peak of some of our confirmed projects. We have more that we’re working on and will be able to share soon. Stay tuned for more updates!