Principles of Co-production in WISHES

The social model of disability

Our Co-production Leadership Team is founded on the principles of the social model of disability.

The social model says that disability is not simply part of a person but is something imposed on people with impairments and health conditions by disabling barriers or attitudes in society.

The social model recognises the importance of relationships and interactions between individuals with impairments and their environment, both social and physical.

Our research will explore whether a job crafting intervention empowers employees to make changes to their jobs in a way that removes or reduces disabling barriers and attitudes.

Nothing About Us Without Us

The social model emphasises the agency and self-determination of disabled people.

We believe the social model of disability is vital in the field of work and health research.

Too often this research has been done to disabled people by non-disabled researchers. Often health and work research can take a medical model approach and focuses on ‘fixing’ disabled people. Disabled people are not treated as experts in their own lives, and this means that disabled people’s insights about what would improve their working lives are missed.

Co-production is important to the WISHES project because job crafting interventions have not previously been designed and researched with disabled employees.

We believe that working in co-production in research with disabled people means that we can carry out research which is meaningful to their lives and that will produce relevant research findings that can inform policy and practice.