Minority Interest: Working to improve the cultural competency of supported living and residential care for adults with learning disabilities from minority ethnic communities

Background: Supported living and residential care services constitute 62% of all social care expenditure on adults with learning disabilities in England.

The number of people with learning disabilities from minority ethnic communities living in these services is not recorded.

Sparse social care evidence mirrors the growing healthcare evidence base in reporting consistent inequalities and poor experiences of services among people with learning disabilities from minority ethnic communities. Recent Care Quality Commission guidance focusing on cultural competence reinforces the importance of this issue.

The research team for this project recently completed a scoping project, 'Small Margins'.

This highlighted the importance of intersectionality in how people with learning disabilities wanted to be supported which was rarely experienced in practice, along with people wanting more research on this issue where people with learning disabilities were an integral part of the research team.

The overall aim of the project is to produce evidence-based resources to improve the cultural competency of supported living and residential care services supporting people with learning disabilities from minority ethnic communities, while respecting the intersectionality of people s experience.

Objectives include: To explore what cultural competency means to people with learning disabilities and support staff and how this impacts on their support To identify key barriers/success factors in the delivery of culturally competent services, and collate examples of culturally competent service support To examine how the intersection of ethnicity and disability impacts on people s lives and either shapes, or is ignored by, people s support Methods: The research includes: 1) a rapid review; 2) Quality Checks to understand the quality of life of 40 people with learning disabilities from minority ethnic communities, including people from South Asian, Black African and African Caribbean communities, and people with dual heritage, living in residential care or supported living services across 6 service providers in England; 3) workshops with 6 existing groups of people with learning disabilities from minority ethnic communities; 4) workshops with 3 local authorities that commission social care; 5) workshops with support staff in each participating provider organisation; 6) interviews in each provider organisation with those responsible for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.

These findings will be used to develop and pilot action learning training for social care staff within the 6 participating service provider organisations, with an evaluation to understand what (if any) difference it makes to staff and the people they support. Further Quality Checks will be conducted where differences in the cultural competence of a service has been indicated.

Finally, publicly available training, policy and practice resources will be co-produced and shared. TImelines: This is a 34-month project, starting on 1st October 2024 and finishing on 31st July 2027.

Anticipated Impact and Dissemination: The project's findings and resources developed from the project will be available free to everyone in multiple accessible formats and in different languages, with the aim of having a positive impact on how people with learning disabilities from minority ethnic communities are supported in supported living and residential care services across England.