New reports on intellectual disability health education

2 Oct 2024

What education do health students get about intellectual disability? What education do students want to get about intellectual disability?

How do people with intellectual disability want to be involved in co-teaching about health and intellectual disability?

We have released two new reports from our project that is creating resources to support the new Intellectual Disability Health Capability Framework.

Students’ experiences and preferences

We asked students studying to be future health professionals what they had learnt about intellectual disability, what they would like to learn, and what types of resources they would like.

We have written a short report about what they said.

Only half of students had learnt about intellectual disability in their courses. Some of the things they told us are:

They want to learn about intellectual disability before doing clinic or community placements.
They want to learn about reasonable adjustments, assessment techniques, ways to reduce stigma, and the relevance of intellectual disability to their field of study.
They want to learn from people with lived experience through co-teaching. They also said it is important that learning resources are co-designed with people with lived experience.

Co-teaching preferences of people with intellectual disability

Download information in Easy Read.

We know how important it is that people with intellectual disability are included when developing resources that may affect their health and wellbeing. Health students said it is important that learning resources are co-designed with people with lived experience.

So we asked people with intellectual disability and their support networks how they would like to be involved in teaching students about intellectual disability. This is called co-teaching.

We have written a short report about what they said. There is an Easy Read version of the report.

Some things people said are:

Include people with intellectual disability from the start of planning education
People with intellectual disability should be asked to co-teach first, before their support network
People with intellectual disability should tell their own story.

What’s next?

We are using what people told us to make resources.

We will be making case studies, videos, and lecture, tutorial plans, and a ‘toolkit’ for educators on how to best include people with lived experience in education about intellectual disability health.

These resources will help support the new Intellectual Disability Health Capability Framework. The Framework covers what health students should learn about intellectual disability.

In future, we will look at creating more resources, such as online modules, lecture recordings and interdisciplinary workshops. Make sure you are signed up to our news to find out when the resources are available. Sign up now.