As the year draws to a close and we elves gear up for some seasonal duties, we take a look at some of the blogs we have published throughout 2014 and welcome some of our new bloggers.
Also, we will be looking for new contributors in 2015, so look out for more news of that in the new year.
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In the week following the publication of the Bubb report after the appalling scenes uncovered at Winterbourne View, a team in Ireland uncover similar abuses in a care centre in Mayo. Here we look at what they found and the initial response of the authorities there.
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The Bubb report has now been published. It recommends a new commissioning framework for services provided for people with learning disabilities and/or autism who are currently in inappropriate hospital units.
Here we take a look at the recommendations and ask if it is enough to bring about the change that is so clearly needed.
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Knowledge about sexuality is a key factor in helping people develop healthy relationships, maintain their sexual health and avoid potentially abusive situations, but how much do sexuality education programmes for people with learning disabilities help fulfil these aims?
In her debut blog, Sian Anderson looks at a review of literature which looks at the effectiveness of sex education programmes and educational materials developed for people with mild or moderate learning disabilities.
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The NICE scoping guidelines on multimorbidity now thankfully include people with learning disabilities. However, the original scoping draft specifically excluded them, despite NHS England and the Department of Health commenting on the first draft.
Here, Pauline Heslop, one of the authors of the Confidential Inquiry report and a key campaigner to get people with learning disabilities included in the scope, talks about some the issues this raises.
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Active support is about ensuring staff have working practices and organisational procedures to improve levels of participation and engagement in activities.
In her debut blog for the Learning Disabilities Elf, Louise Philips describes a study which set out to look at whether the quality of practice leadership was a factor in developing active support.
Louise also sets out an excellent breakdown of exactly what practice leadership is what managers need to do to ensure this framework for practice development is robust.
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What needs to be done to ensure quality services for adults with profound and multiple learning disabilities and how can organisations ensure that this is done consistently?
Here, Nick Burton describes the findings of an Australian study that uses observational methodology to look in great detail at what was happening for a number of people in small 24hr staffed houses for four to six people.
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Parents of children with learning disability and/or autism in seeking support with parenting skills, may have need of support with specific skills relevant to supporting their child with a disability.
Here, Kate van Dooren looks at a ‘pragmatic non-randomised’ study which evaluated a parent programme called ‘Riding the Rapids’ to see what happened to those parents who followed the programme.
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People with learning disabilities may be at higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes, but often struggle with technical language and complicated explanations. Here we look at a new easy read booklet published as part of an ongoing research project into diabetes people with learning disabilities.
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Following our recent post on what has happened since the publication of the CIPOLD Confidential Inquiry report, we joined a tweet chat hosted by WeLDNurses with two of the report’s authors: Pauline Heslop and Matt Hoghton.
It was a really lively hour with some fantastic contributions. Here we present a summary of the comments with some links to information that was mentioned during the chat itself.
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