Background What is good practice when supporting people with learning disabilities? This is the question that was raised following the publication of the Government’s interim report into the events at Winterbourne View. The question was put to the National Valuing Families Forum and the National Forum for People with Learning Disabilities over the last year [read the full story…]
People with Down syndrome are more likely to develop dementia than those without and this is more likely to occur at an earlier age, where clinical symptoms can occur when people are in their late 40s or early 50s. Now researchers at the University of Cambridge are embarking on a study to look at why [read the full story…]
This USA based meta-analysis looked at the association between parenting and outcomes for children with developmental disabilities. The authors point out that despite there being an extensive literature supporting the positive relationship between positive parenting and child outcomes for typically developing children, there has been little work to analyse the literature specific to children with [read the full story…]
We recently posted about the findings of a review of the literature relating to orofacial regulation therapy which concluded that whilst the results of published studies inferred significant positive impacts, there was a need for larger multi-centre research to produce more statistically significant and valid results. Given these findings, this paper looked in more detail [read the full story…]
People with Down syndrome often have orofacial difficulties (a term that relates to the mouth and face) which can affect speech, swallowing and dental health. The Journal of Disability and Oral Health has recently published two reviews looking at this issue. The first looked at Orofacial regulation therapy (OFRT), developed in the 1970s by Castillo-Morales, [read the full story…]
We know that people with learning disabilities have a higher risk of a range of health conditions. Studies in the UK have shown that they have a shorter life expectancy with increased risk of early death compared to the general population, and health screening by GPs has shown significantly high levels of unmet physical and [read the full story…]
People with Down syndrome are more likely to develop dementia than those without and indeed this is more likely to occur at an earlier age, where clinical symptoms can occur when people are in their late 40s or early 50s. There is also some evidence that there are some differences in clinical symptoms in people [read the full story…]
The benefits of exercise for a healthy lifestyle are now well understood. However, there are issues relating to the physiology of people with Down syndrome which might suggest limitations to the extent to which they can engage in cardiovascular or resistance exercises. we also know that many people with Down syndrome are overweight or obese. [read the full story…]
The researchers in this US study were looking to compare a range of indicators of health status and service use between adults with learning disabilities, with and without Down syndrome. They compared 1,199 people using services who had Down syndrome (DS) with a comparative sample of 11,182 people with learning disabilities who did not have [read the full story…]
Dementia has been shown to be present at higher rates in adults with learning disabilities, with people with Down syndrome being at significantly increased risk of developing early onset dementia. The researchers in this Italian study were keen to look at whether approaches to dementia-derived environment, input from specialist personnel or patient-oriented intervention strategies had [read the full story…]
