Lead by Professor Mary McCarron, the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Trinity College Dublin, in collaboration with the National Federation of Voluntary Bodies, are proposing a 10 Year Intellectual Disability Supplement to The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA).  Data will be collected three times over 10 years from 800 people with intellectual disability (over age 40) on physical and psychosocial health, living situations, social networks and quality of life.   Resources of €1.5 million and support of providers throughout Ireland will be needed to support implementation.

Aims
To include for the first time a representative sample of older people with intellectual disabilities in a longitudinal study of ageing to; 

• identify the principal influences on successful ageing in persons with intellectual disability, 
• understand how health, social support, family caregiving, services, living arrangements and pre-existing life long disability influence successful ageing, and 
• provide data to support the development of evidence based policies and services to enhance successful ageing of people with intellectual disability.

This study is the first-ever national longitudinal study on ageing people with intellectual disability in Ireland.  The principal investigator is Dr. Mary McCarron Associate Professor at the School of Nursing and Midwifery TCD and Daughters of Charity Dublin.   In 2007 the National Federation was invited to nominate someone to The Scientific Advisory Committee of the ‘Intellectual Disability Supplement to TILDA’. 

Edel Tierney Director of Research and Policy Development represents the National Federation on this group.

Further details are available here.

Details of the National Rollout are available here.

Updated February 2010