Improving employment conditions and labour market engagement for people with chronic energy limiting conditions

Dr Kate Hardy, Leeds University Business School

Knowledge Exchange Fellowship

People with energy limiting chronic illness (ELCI) are a large, but hidden, section of the disabled population in the UK, and make up a significant proportion of the caseload for out-of-work disability benefits. The Chronic Illness Inclusion Project (CIIP) is emancipatory disability research, part of DRILL programme of userled research funded by National Lottery Community Fund and hosted by the Centre for Welfare Reform. The aim of the project is to develop advocacy and voice for people with energy limiting chronic illness through combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods.

This Knowledge Exchange Fellowship (KEF) will enable Stefanie Benstead and Catherine Hale from the Chronic Illness Inclusion Project (CIIP) to join CERIC as a Fellows, on a job share basis for six months to work with Dr Kate Hardy and Dr Jo Ingold on a project developing impact in relation to the research produced by CIIP on chronic illness and social security. Through the KEF, disabled researchers with lived experience of chronic illness will produce and launch a major policy report; organise a series of impact meetings and events and host those events with the academic partners (Hardy and Ingold). The CIIP’s robust body of research, combined with academic support from CERIC, has the potential to lead to a transformation in social security and labour market policy and bring major positive financial and quality-of-life implications for people with ELCI. The ultimate aim of the KEF is both to engage in truly bilateral knowledge exchange on the subject ELCI and to work towards co-develop a large research proposal for Nuffield Foundation.

Dr Kate Hardy can be contacted by email: K.R.Hardy@leeds.ac.uk