Victim and
witness care

In 2010, Rachael Clawson worked with the Ann Craft Trust, a national charity working to prevent the abuse of people with learning disabilities, to undertake the first UK study on forced marriage of people with learning disabilities. Discussions with the Home Office/Foreign and Commonwealth Office Forced Marriage Unit revealed that they had little information on the prevalence, motivations or consequences of forced marriage for this group and how this linked to current safeguarding practices.

Drawing on her research, Rachael wrote the multi-agency guidelines on forced marriage of people with learning disabilities for the Government’s Forced Marriage Unit. The guidelines are being used to inform policy and practice and have been circulated to statutory and voluntary sector social care organisations, schools, colleges and criminal justice professionals – including the police and health services.

In 2007, Dr Rachel Fyson was commissioned by Mencap on behalf of the Department of Health and the Government’s Learning Disability Taskforce to conduct research into the role and effectiveness of Learning Disability Partnership Boards. Recommendations from Dr Fyson’s work directly informed the 2009 Valuing People Now White Paper (Cm 5086). Reaching out directly to local policy makers, Dr Fyson’s research findings have been made publicly available via various websites including Mencap’s website and the NHS library. More recently, Dr Fyson has undertaken a range of work on adult safeguarding, including evaluations of local authorities’ safeguarding practices.