My Marriage My Choice – forced marriage and people with learning disabilities

For our next Disability History Month blog, we are speaking to Rachael Clawson, who is a member of our National Advisory Forum and associate professor at the University of Nottingham, where she is the Director of the Centre for Social Work.

Since 2008 Rachael has been researching the forced and unlawful marriage of people with learning disabilities.

We spoke to Rachael about the importance of co-producing this work.

What led you to begin this research?

Whilst working for the Ann Craft Trust I was made aware of people with learning disabilities who were married and, in some situations, practitioners were concerned that people might not have known they were in a marriage or understood what being married was about. They were concerned about the well-being and safety of some people who were married.

To try to get a better understanding of the issue we talked with the UK Government’s Forced Marriage Unit, but they didn't have any information on this type of forced marriage. The Forced Marriage Unit funded our initial research project in 2008 which led to us writing government guidance on forced marriage for people with learning disabilities.

How has your research developed recently?

Our most recent project, funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) School for Social Care Research, looked at how people from different groups understand forced marriage. We talked to people with learning disabilities, their families and carers, safeguarding practitioners, faith leaders, and marriage registrars to find out what their perspectives were and to see if they had similar or different views about what forced marriage is and how to recognise it.

What we found was that people had differing views of what forced marriage is. Most people recognised forced marriage as involving someone getting married when they didn’t want to, but very few people understood issues around capacity to consent to marriage or vulnerability to being coerced. For example, the group of people with learning disabilities we spoke to said that nobody should tell them to get married. But when we presented a scenario where a parent had found somebody really kind who was going to look after them, the people with learning disabilities said they would find it difficult to say no.

As part of the research, we developed a range of resources to help people better understand and respond to the issue. We developed a film, and a workbook to help people with learning disabilities and their families understand what forced marriage looks like and where to go to get help. Practitioners can use these to help people understand what forced marriage is and empower them with more information. We also developed a tool kit to help practitioners assess people’s capacity to consent to marriage. All these things are available for free on our website ‘My Marriage My Choice’.

What was the importance of giving people with learning disabilities a voice in this research project?

It was hugely important. In the first research project, we only spoke to practitioners and although this gave us a good understanding of their views, we realised we also needed to understand the views of people with learning disabilities and their families. Safeguarding people is made more difficult if practitioners have one view and families and people with learning disabilities another. For example, family members recognised what forced marriage was and said they would never do this to their child. However, they didn’t understand issues of capacity to consent. If they found the right partner for their child, this was seen as ok.

People with learning disabilities helped us build better materials to help keep people safe. They were involved in the advisory group, contributing to writing the scripts for the scenarios that we used, and in making the film.

The involvement of people with learning disabilities helps social workers to understand the complexities of the issue. For example, it helped them better understand how the forced marriage of people with learning disabilities differs to other cases of forced marriage and helped them recognise what the motivators and consequences are. We must also consider the issue of capacity to consent and how that might be assessed. What we don't want is a situation that excludes people with learning disabilities getting married if they so choose and have capacity to consent.

What challenges do student social workers face when working with people with learning disabilities?

Students might not have any experience of knowing a person with a disability. They may not have disabled family members, and they may not have gone to school or college with anyone with a learning disability.

What's important is for them to try and understand things from somebody else's perspective. A lot of the work we do with students is in relation to use of self; supporting students to understand their values, where their beliefs come from, how they influence how they think and the decisions they make, and then relating that to other people.

“You can’t begin to start understanding somebody else, without understanding your own point of reference first.” - Rachael Clawson

For more information on equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) at Social Work England, you can read our statement of intent and EDI action plan.

If you need support for any of the issues discussed in this article, these organisations may be able to help you.

Don’t forget to read our last Disability History Month blog, where we interviewed Yasmeen Abdul-Rahim about her work as a person with lived experience of disability