Person centred planning was placed at the heart of policy for services to people with learning disabilities in the 2001 White Paper, Valuing People. This approach to planning has been developed into a broader approach to personalisation throughout the system. One of the tools developed to help is the ‘one page profile’. Often there is [read the full story…]
We have posted previously of the role of attributions in the way support staff respond to challenging behaviour, with studies looking at inconsistencies in responses and the impact of specific attributions on helping behaviour The researchers in this Scottish based study were interested in exploring this further, and in particular looking at the extent to [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…]
Lumos, the children’s charity and Change a national human rights organisation led by disabled people have been working together on a project to help close institutions for disabled people across central and eastern Europe. The latest publication from the project was the result of a visit to institutions in central and eastern Europe by the [read the full story…]
Considering the issues relating to consent to participate in research will apply to people with learning disabilities in the same way as to any other ‘human subjects’ , but they are often excluded from research on the basis that researchers perceive ‘learning disability’ as an automatic exclusion criterion, assuming this means lack of capacity to [read the full story…]
Annual health checks for people with learning disabilities were introduced as part of the Direct Enhanced Service in England in 2008 and a recent review of studies involving over 5000 people with learning disabilities showed that the provision of checks consistently found unmet health needs and enabled targeted action to address these needs. Health checks [read the full story…]
Following the signing of the concordat on Winterbourne View, there was a commitment to producing a report on progress against the agreements made by the signatories of that document . This report was published earlier this month and reports the findings from a questionnaire administered to all the 152 health and well-being board areas. The [read the full story…]
Anti-psychotic medications comprise between 30–50% of all psychotropics prescribed for people with learning disabilities. One of the potential side effects is metabolic syndrome (a group of risk factors that occur together and increase the risk for coronary artery disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes in people with learning disabilities who have been prescribed antipsychotic medication.) [read the full story…]
We have posted previously about end of life issues for people with learning disabilities, for example, pointing to the impact of training in palliative care as well as to resources such as the films made by Change for the dying matters coalition that can be used to help include people with learning disabilities in discussions [read the full story…]
Making the move from primary to secondary school can be stressful for all involved and if you are a young person with a learning disabilities or other special educational needs these stresses can be magnified. Moving to secondary school often means lots of change at once – new building, new routes to learn, new classmates, [read the full story…]
