members of Hackney People First, with help from Paula Mitchell, PhD student, Open University.This article is written by three people with learning difficulties. It is about our experience of doing research. We are all members of Hackney People First and in 1994 we got involved in a project researching self-advocacy and families. The article describes why we decided to get involved, our feelings about doing research and what we did. It explains the help we had to take part.Researchers have been talking about disabled people doing research for quite some time, but involving people with learning difficulties as researchers is only just beginning. This article is extremely important, as one of the very few times that people with learning difficulties have written about carrying out research.month, first of all to learn about research, and then to talk about what we were researching. We'talked about self-advocacy, families, and what we thought self? advocacy at home should be about. Then we set rules and a plan for the research.We did it in ways that people can understand. A lot of people can't understand writing. The Yellow Brick Road is the first thing we did (see Pictrue 1). Follow the Yellow Brick Road! We've done a lot of talking and Paula wrote what we said and drew pictures. We had words on bits of paper and pulled them out of a hat to talk about them. We stuck up stickers on posters. We've used taperecorders. Picture 1 The Yellow Brick RoadWe are research people. This article is about how we planned a research project. The research is about selfadvocacy and families. It is about people with learning difficulties who live with their families and who are in self-advocacy groups. It is about how families get on and whether people speak up at home. How We StartedWe started in 1994. Paula came to a Hackney People First meeting. She said she had research to do. We had a vote on who wanted to do the research with her.We wanted to take part in t h i s to help ourselves, and to help qthers. We wanted to do research about things that are important to know. Paula thought we would be the proper people to do it so people with learning difficulties can be in control for a change. We know a lot about self-advocacy and families, so we are the experts for this research. We would help Paula think about things differently. She thought it would probably help us as well. What We DidWe can do a lot more than people think we can. We just need help and the chance to try. We had meetings once a

The basic principles of a functional guidance program do not change even in wartime. Following the call to conserve manpower it becomes more important, not less, for schools to stress the individual inventory. In times of lush job opportunities it is just as essential to the individual's welfare to possess needed occupational information about a prospective job as during depression periods. When personal plans have to be subjugated in the interest of winning the war, when many normal outlets are blocked, the importance of providing adequate services for individual counseling cannot be overlooked. Placement is now far more than just finding a job-any job. The individual must think of his place either presently or ultimately in the armed services or in some defense industry. The multitude of training opportunities which a school-leaver faces presents a need for guidance in all of its aspects. Follow-up is more important than ever. Data thus derived should be used as a partial basis for curriculum modifications and as a guide in rendering further help to those w~ho have already left the school and in effective counseling. ' Although the basic principles of guidance remain the same, the war does necessitate a re-emphasis along certain lines. Established trends are disrupted. New opportunities open up; old ones disappear. The State Department of Public Instruction through the Occupational Information and Guidance Service is attempting to render the kind of service best adapted to the demands of guidance programs functioning during the stress of war. A few specific projects undertaken during 1942 are outlined. l. Counseling About Problems Affected by the War In co-operation with the Division of Instructional Service, a plan was sent to each of the 960 secondary-school principals containing, &dquo;Suggestions for Finding Out the More Important Questions and Problems Influenced by the War Which Are Faced by High-School S-eniors.&dquo;' This plan was tried out experimentally in a city high school, a small town high school, and three rural high schools. From these try-outs it was found that seniors were very much concerned about future plans and how the war is affecting them. They were 1 A detailed account of this plan appeared in an article, "The Significance of Current Problems and Questions of High School Seniors as Related to the Curriculum," High School Jousnal, May I942, pp.22I-225.

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Fourteen counselors in North Carolina have cooperated in a countywide project, a follow‐up study of school‐leavers. The project was successfully executed without outside help or extra financing and with only those resources available to any group of local schools. The implications of the study in terms of the need for curricular revision and vocational and educational guidance are considered here.