What is an Inquiry?
An Inquiry 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.
Inquiries can be run by the government, organisations or social movements.
What is How we Survive and Thrive?
The How We Survive and Thrive inquiry is led by and focuses on people with learning disabilities.
The main question the inquiry will think about 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 want to think about practical recommendations for the future.
The inquiry will collect evidence of people with learning disabilities experiences during the covid-19 pandemic.
We will hear from people with learning disabilities, families and people who support them.
This will help the our commissioners create recommendations for how we can be ready for future pandemics.
Why are we doing this work?
The government has set up the UK Covid-19 Inquiry to look at the UK’s response to and impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
We want to make sure people with learning disabilities are being heard by the UK Covid-19 inquiry.
We want to make sure government, policy and systems can support people with learning disabilities better in the future.
How We Survive and Thrive will be led by people with learning disabilities to make sure everyone’s voices can be heard.
How will the inquiry work?
How We Survive and Thrive will be led by 2 co-chairs and 10 commissioners.
6 commissioners will have a learning disability and 4 will be family members.
The inquiry will build on work and research on peoples experience of the pandemic, such as the UK Coronavirus and people with learning disabilities research.
They will work on gathering and evaluating evidence on 6 topics to help us answer our big question
The topics are:
- Being Heard and Decisions Making
- Health and Mental Health
- Social Care
- Housing
- Having Purpose
- Communication, Information and Digital
At the end of the project the inquiry will make recommendations to government and policy makers on how we can better support people with learning disabilities in the next pandemic.
