We’re seeking people for IncludeAge

We want to find out about the community spaces that older people with learning disabilities and older people who are LGBT+ use in their everyday lives. This includes offline and online spaces.

The project is called IncludeAge and it’s run by The University of Dundee, Liverpool John Moores University, the University of Edinburgh, and the University of Hertfordshire.

It’s funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council.

Find out about the Include Age project

• Visit the IncludeAge website or the Easy Read website.
• Watch our short video.

Anna Marriott, NDTi’s Research and Evaluation Programme Lead, is co-lead for one of the workstreams:

“The piece of work is much needed and I think that one of the strengths of this project is the number and range of partners involved. It includes national and internal academic partners and a wide range of community organisations and charities.

“My main role is supporting the participation of people with lived experience of learning disabilities, which is happening on a number of levels. We have an advisory group overseeing the project, but we have also employed co-researchers. They’ll be working alongside academic researchers to collect and make sense of the data.

“This group have already met for a memorable couple of days in Dudley to take part in some training about doing research and working as a team. There has been a huge amount of work to design and set-up a project of this size and we are now at the really exciting stage of recruiting participants.”

How to take part

There are several opportunities to get involved in the IncludeAge project at different stages.

Sign up to the IncludeAge newsletter to find out more.

At the moment, we’re looking for middle-aged to older (40+) people who are LGBT+ and/or who have a learning disability.

At this stage we are exploring experiences of inclusion, belonging, and community throughout people’s lives.

Find out more

If you’re interested fill in this form to find out more: Easy Read information and expression of interest form.

This does not mean you have agreed to take part.

If you have any questions, please contact Joe Tai by email on JTai001@dundee.ac.uk or by phone on 07423 205587.

We hope this research will help develop policy and other practical suggestions to enable middle-to-older aged people with learning disabilities and LGBT+ people to feel more included, wherever they are.

The research is funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and is running from 2022-2026. It has received university ethical approval [UOD-SREC-SHSC-2023-20].