Allyship in Healthcare for People With Learning Disabilities as a Praxis of Respect, Attention and Collaborative Action

Abstract

There is a dearth of literature focusing on how allyship in health may be enacted in relation to people with learning disabilities (LD). This is concerning, because people with LD are vulnerable to health inequalities and forms of medical dehumanisation including do-not-resuscitate orders, diagnostic overshadowing and overprescription of psychotropic drugs. Deploying critical disability studies as a lens through which to understand disability, this paper reviews models of disability allyship developed in healthcare, research and theatre. In doing so it advocates transformative allyship as a model that can both animate action in support of people with learning disabilities and accommodate the involvement of others, including clinicians, carers and relatives, without compromising the all-important commitment to supporting disability cultures. The paper presents and analyses ethnographic data gained through observations of eleven healthcare appointments between seven clinicians and five patients with LD, undertaken as part of the ESRC-funded study Humanising Healthcare. It documents the potential of transformative allyship in healthcare to transform harmful disablist practices through emphasising respect, attention and collaborative action while also noting that broader structural conditions and diagnostic technologies limit the extent to which clinicians can enact transformative allyship.