Evaluation of communication passports
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Evaluating the impact of communication passports for people with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) living in adult social care
IRAS ID
238836
Contact name
Jill Bradshaw
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Kent
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 3 months, 31 days
Research summary
What are communication passports?
Communication passports are a tool for supporting people who cannot easily speak for themselves, by making information from formal assessments easily accessible to all. They contain information about the person in a very clear way.Passports aim to:
• Provide a positive introduction to the person;
• Include information about the person’s own views and preferences;
• Describe how to communicate, including ways to present information and how to best present information to that person;
Communication passports include information from all of the places where individuals spend time (e.g. home, work, social care) so that communication partners (those people who are communicating with the individual) know what is needed for successful interactions. Done well, communication passports are easy to read, informative, useful and fun.
We know from previous research that:
• Parents and practitioners are positive about communication passports;
• Most studies did not look at impact of the communication passports;
• Only 3 studies included adults.
What will this study look at?
This study will include adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (people with learning disabilities and autism) who are living in adult social care. It will include people with a range of communication skills. Some people will have communication passports and some people won’t have communication passports. We will look at:
• What communication skills and difficulties people have;
• How other people communicate with the person;
• What people think about the communication passport (for those who have them).
We will compare the group of people who have communication passports to the group of people who do not have communication passports. We will:
• Check the quality of the communication passport (where one exists);
• Assess communication skills by using some formal and some informal assessments;
• Talk to other people to find out how they communicate with the person
• Watch the person in an everyday situation so that we can see what happens with communication
• Use visual communication tools (Talking Mats) to ask people what they think about their communication support.We will analyse the information to find out whether having a communication passport made a difference to the quality and consistency of communication.
REC name
Social Care REC
REC reference
17/IEC08/0055
Date of REC Opinion
26 Feb 2018
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion