IDA Magazine Vol 39 Iss 2 (Jun 2018)

2018 ASID CONFERENCE
2018 Conference Speakers
Chris Hatton
Professor of Public Health and Disability
Co-Director, Public Health England Learning Disabilities Observatory
Regional Co-Director, NIHR Research Design Service North West
chris.hatton@lancaster.ac.uk
When the Editor of IDA asked me to write a short biography/profile, she sent through four questions to
get me started. These stopped me in my tracks a bit, so rather than do the usual biography I thought it
might be more interesting to answer these questions instead.
What led you to work in this area?
In the late 1980s I was doing a psychology undergraduate degree in Manchester, England, and one of
the final year options was called ‘three devalued groups’, taught by clinical psychologists working out
of a shrinking (but not completely closed) Victorian institution on the northern outskirts of Manchester.
The buildings are still there today, hemmed in by an urban motorway, a massive supermarket and TGI
Fridays. Strongly influenced by Wolf Wolfensberger, they talked about the lives of people with dementia,
people with psychosis and people with intellectual disabilities, how the institution they were working out
of was a physical manifestation of society’s devaluation, and how they were trying to find alternatives. I
was furious and inspired in equal measure, and was lucky enough to have a world-class research centre
working with people with intellectual disabilities on my doorstep, the Hester Adrian Research Centre. And
although I am now a proud uncle of my niece who has a label of intellectual disabilities, that course was
where it started – thank you Ian Fleming and Alan Tatham!
What have been your highlights?
I’ve found this a really hard question, so there are a few ways of (not) answering it. The first is that the
kind of work I do is never done alone – it always involves colleagues and teams of people and is much
the better for it, and any highlights of mine are because I’ve been lucky in my colleagues. The second is
that it’s for others rather than me to say what any highlights have been - our work needs to be judged on
how it has been part of any positive changes in the lives of people with intellectual disabilities, and I’m
not in the best position to make those calls. The closest to a real answer is that although a new database
brings a glint to my eye, I’m always most energised by working with self-advocates, families, and other
people who are doing good stuff – that gives me a real buzz.
32 www.asid.asn.au