John Northfield

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After qualifying as a social worker, John worked in community learning disability teams before getting involved in a number of long-stay hospital closure programmes, working to develop individual plans for people moving into their own homes. He worked for BILD, helping to develop the Quality Network and was editorial lead for the NHS electronic library learning disabilities specialist collection. This led him to found the Learning Disabilities Elf site with Andre Tomlin as a way of making the evidence accessible to practitioners in health and social care. Most recently he has worked as part of Mencap's national quality team and also been involved in a number of national website developments, including the General Medical Council's learning disabilities site.

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New employment relationships between with learning disabilities and their paid supporters still to be explored in the literature

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Modernisation of social care and the move towards personalisation have opened up opportunities for people with learning disabilities to take control of their supports through using individual budgets to employ supports. This study set out to look at the impact of this policy change on people with learning disabilities and their families employing their own [read the full story…]

A human rights approach to risk management balances individual rights within the management strategy

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The prescribing of psychotropics for people with intellectual disability needs to be addressed.

A number of recent inquiries have highlighted the concern that people with learning disabilities may on occasion be denied access to their basic human rights. The authors of this study set out to explore this concern in relation to approaches to risk management taken in services, which they suggest may focus too much on professional [read the full story…]

Fear of increased injury should not be perceived as a risk when employing people with learning disabilities

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Despite many people with learning disabilities expressing the wish that they would like the opportunity to work, rates of employment remain extremely low. One concern that potential employers may have is that the risk of injury to workers with learning disabilities may be greater and consequently, insurance costs may rise. This Canadian study set out [read the full story…]

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Therapists working with people with learning disabilities should allow time for reflection and consideration of alternative interpretations

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The authors of this study used a cognitive-emotive interview with 19 subjects with learning disabilities and 19 matched subjects without a learning disability. The authors set out to compare how people with and without learning disabilities talked about events, beliefs and emotions in dialogues which covered real-life, specific emotive events and as part of a [read the full story…]

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Scottish study finds need for better knowledge of positive behaviour strategies for children with learning disabilities

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How staff supporting children with learning disabilities and challenging behaviour is clearly of major importance. This Scottish study set out to look at the knowledge that teaching staff had regarding definitions of and management of challenging behaviour displayed by children with learning disability. They found that the levels of knowledge amongst staff levels were relatively [read the full story…]

Structured assessment framework improves adherence to requirements of mental capacity act

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Law

The Mental Capacity Act has created a legal framework for those supporting people with learning disabilities making decisions about the way they live their lives. The Act provides safeguards for those people who may be unable to make decisions for themselves and sets out guidance for supporters. The authors of this paper carried out an [read the full story…]

US study finds high levels of obesity in women with learning disability, Down syndrome, and milder learning disability

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In this US study, the authors looked at the prevalence of obesity in people with learning disability and those in the general U.S. adult population without learning disability. They found that adults with learning disability did not differ from the general population in prevalence of obesity. However, when they combined obesity and overweight they found [read the full story…]

Behavioural interventions impact on quality of life for children with fragile x syndrome

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fragile x

The supporters of children with fragile X syndrome often report behaviour that challenges as a major concern. The authors of this small-scale, multiple baseline design study set out to explore whether behaviourally-based interventions might result in reductions in problem behaviour and improvements in the quality of life for 3 children with fragile X syndrome and [read the full story…]

Advances in neuroimaging provide insights into anotomical features of the brain in people with autism

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This review of literature published in the last twelve months set out to chart progress made in understanding anatomical and functional features in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The authors searched databases for research findings in the neuroimaging of autism using a variety of Medline search terms They found that techniques such as functional magnetic resonance [read the full story…]

People with learning disabilities had positive expectations of therapy, but some were unclear why they were referred

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Breakdown

This small scale study set out to carry out an initial exploration of the measurement of therapy expectancy in adults with learning disabilities through the therapy expectation measure (TEAM). The authors combined a top-down theory-driven and bottom-up data-driven process in the initial development phase, where they identified TEAM items and format, followed by correlational analyses [read the full story…]