'It Makes Me Feel Confident': A Community Based Participatory Study of Experiences of Employment for People With Intellectual Disabilities.

BACKGROUND

A social enterprise brewery requested help from researchers to understand their employment opportunities for people with intellectual disabilities ('trainees'). A community-based participatory framework (CBPR) was used to develop the research.

METHOD: Digital storytelling was selected to enable trainees to express their views about their work. Six participants created digital stories with support from researchers. Transcripts of the stories were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis.

FINDINGS: Three main themes were developed: 'Learning new skills'; 'We do good work'; and 'I belong at the brewery', each with several subthemes. One overarching theme, 'I feel more confident' was developed to represent the ways in which different aspects of the work had developed their confidence.

CONCLUSION

Working within the brewery seemed to have both immediate and far-reaching benefits for participants. Further research would be needed to better understand the wider impact on the local community.