Exercising choice and control – women with learning disabilities and contraception

Accessible summary This project was about contraception. Contraception is the things people use to stop a woman from getting pregnant. We spoke to 23 women with learning disabilities and 162 doctors wrote to us. Sometimes women with learning disabilities made their own decisions, but mostly it was other people who decided for them. We suggest some ways to help women with learning disabilities get more information and be helped to decide for themselves. Summary This research project used semi‐structured in‐depth interviews to ask women with learning disabilities about the experience of being prescribed contraception. It also asked general practitioners about their prescribing practices through a postal survey. A service user group was involved at different stages of the project. Most of the women reported that it was other people who made the key decisions about starting to use contraception and which method to use. Both the women and the doctors said they liked having a third party (staff member or relative) present for the consultations. Many of the doctors were unclear about responding to issues of capacity to consent to treatment. An accessible research summary was produced to make the process and findings of the research available to the women with learning disabilities who took part in the study, as well as to any others who were interested (see Disability and Society , 24, 357–371, 2009). In the interests of disseminating that accessible report as widely as possible, extracts are included in this article, and the full version is available from the author.