About The Project

Our overarching aim is to explore the experiences of disabled young people as they move towards adulthood.

There are many different things that could be important during this time – we want to understand what matters from the perspective of disabled young people. It could be things like planning to go to further education or university, or thinking about work, or thinking about moving home, or hoping to explore different relationships, or getting involved in different aspects of social life. It could be some or none of those things. We know that there are many things that can make becoming an adult difficult for disabled young people. Things like prejudice, physical and social barriers, lack of resources to name a few. We also know that the pandemic has not helped and now the cost of living crisis is producing other difficulties. It is important to identify anything that can help disabled young people move towards the futures they want. This can include help from services such as education and health and social care. It can also be about changing social attitudes.

We aim to explore all of this and highlight what works and what doesn’t work in supporting disabled young people.

Project Advisors

To help us do the research in ways that are appropriate and relevant we are working with a range of organisations that support and advocate with disabled young people in Newcastle and Glasgow. Very importantly we will be working with some disabled young people who will act as advisors across the lifetime of the project. Our advisors will feed into all aspects of how we do the work and how we make sure we identify key points to feed into policy and practice in both research locations and beyond. They will also take part in some of the research activities we undertake.

What the Research Involves

What our research will involve will be shaped by the discussions with our project advisors, but approaches we are looking at include:

  • Talking with disabled young people over time about their experiences.

  • Exploring ways that might capture their experiences through practices such as taking photographs, or making films, or writing stories.

  • Bringing disabled young people together to identify differences and similarities in their experiences.

  • Talking with families of disabled young people and advocacy groups about their experiences of supporting disabled young people.

Who will be invited to participate in the project?

We want to ensure we work with a range of different disabled young people, both in terms of the impairments they experience, but also other aspects of who they are, such as where they live, their age, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and class.

We will develop, helped by our advisors, approaches to explaining the project and getting involved in it that will make it accessible for people with different impairments and needs. This includes learning disabled young people and people with different types of communication style. Our researchers will be trained to use communication supports such as Talking Mats and Makaton. We are also interested in the experiences of young people with chronic illnesses such as diabetes, ME and Long Covid. To be involved our main criteria is that young people define themselves as disabled.  

Timeline for the project

The project began January 2023 and is funded till June 2025. Key stages in the project include:

  • January 2023 - March 2023: Establish our project advisory team and our disabled young people advisors.

  • April 2023 – December 2024: Undertake fieldwork research.

  • January 2025 – March 2025: Agree key findings and recommendations with project advisory team and our disabled young people.

  • April 2025 – June 2025: Disseminate key findings and recommendations, supported by our project advisory group and disabled young people, to policy makers and practitioners.