| Sumario: | In this series of articles we will be looking at nurse education and how it has sometimes struggled to accommodate the needs and demands of those students whose main interest is caring for people who live with learning disabilities. This first article explores the context of UK nurse education in general before focusing on how students on learning disability courses came to occupy their current positions. The second piece will look at the emergent career paths taken by graduates of the combined learning disability nursing and social work programme at Sheffield Hallam University. Graduates of this course are now employed in a variety of settings and work with a range of individuals who display hugely differing challenges. In speaking with these new professionals we will find out about the preconceptions they faced when they began their working lives and ask them about being dually qualified. We will conclude our series with an appraisal of the story so far and a consideration of the possibilities ahead. In this article the authors make the point that social policy simultaneously directs and reflects the view of the wider society, and emphasise that when any of us talk about disability, in any of its guises, we are inevitably making a political statement.
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