'I'm a researcher!' Working together to gain ethical approval for a participatory research study

'I'm a researcher!' These were the words used by one member of our research team when we left a meeting of our Local Research Ethics Committee having been granted approval for our research study. This participatory study aims to ask people with intellectual disabilities¹ what they think about health and what helps them to be healthy. However, it also aims to enable people with intellectual disabilities to develop their skills as researchers. We felt that we had learnt a lot from the process of gaining ethical committee approval and, since ethical committee approval is something which many participatory studies may need to secure, we thought that our experiences would help other people both nationally and internationally who are planning to undertake similar work. We therefore decided to write this article.