What is an Commission?
A Commission is a group of experts who come together to understand a problem.
They collect evidence, analyse it and suggest answers, solutions and recommendations for their problem.
Commissions can be run by the government, organisations or social movements.
What is How we Survive and Thrive?
How We Survive and Thrive is led by and focuses on people with learning disabilities and families.
The main question the inquiry worked on is:
What needs to happen for people with learning disabilities to be in the best place to survive and thrive when the next pandemic comes?
We wanted to think about practical recommendations for the future.
The commission collected evidence of people with learning disabilities experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic.
We heard from people with learning disabilities, families and people who support them.
We heard from people in lots of different ways:
- Surveys
- Interviews
- Online and in person workshops
- Workshops in a box
- Case studies, videos and research
This helped our commissioners create recommendations for how we can be ready for future pandemics.
Why are we doing this work?
Th UK Covid-19 Inquiry is collecting evidence about the UK’s response to and impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
We do not think the UK Covid Inquiry heard from as many people with learning disabilities as it should.
We wanted to make sure people with learning disabilities are heard by both the UK Covid-19 inquiry and the government.
Our recommendations will help make sure government, policy and systems can support people with learning disabilities better in future emergancies.
How We Survive and Thrive has been led by people with learning disabilities and families to make sure everyone’s voices can be heard.
How did the commission work?
How We Survive and Thrive was be led by 2 co-chairs Andrew Lee and Philippa Russell.
We also has 10 commissioners. 6 commissioners will have a learning disability and 4 will be family members.
The Commission built on work and research on peoples experience of the pandemic, such as the UK Coronavirus and people with learning disabilities research.
We workerd on gathering and evaluating evidence on 6 topics to help us answer our big question
The topics were:
- Being Heard and Decisions Making
- Health and Mental Health
- Social Care
- Housing
- Having Purpose
- Communication, Information and Digital
Our aim for the end of the projct was to make recommendations to government and policy makers on how we can better support people with learning disabilities in the next pandemic.