The issue of faith and participation in faith communities for people with learning disabilities is not widely explored in the literature. In 2004, the foundation for people with learning disabilities published the report of a two-year action research project to develop and describe creative ideas for meeting people’s religious needs and produced a good practice [read the full story…]
Attitudes held by professionals towards the empowerment of people with learning disabilities can impact enormously on the nature of the support they receive. There is a big literature on the impact of attitudes held by medical professional s on access to and quality of healthcare for example. This issue was key to the pace of [read the full story…]
The Department of Health has this week published its interim report into the events at Winterbourne View, the private hospital in Bristol in which the BBC’s Panorama programme uncovered shocking abuse by care staff. The reports finds that: Too many people are placed in in-patient services for assessment and treatment (A&T) and are staying there [read the full story…]
We have posted previously about the use of active support which involves training staff in working practices and organisational procedures to improve levels of participation and increase levels of engagement in activities. The purpose of the current study however was to look at the impact of active support approaches on other outcome measures. The researchers [read the full story…]
In the UK as a whole the most recent estimate from an Action for Advocacy survey is that 55.4% of advocacy organisations provide services for people with learning disabilities, although there is growing concern about the precarious nature of funding for many of those services. The IHAL report points to the argument that the development [read the full story…]
Understanding the sources of funding to support disabled people can be a confusing business, but this helpful booklet from the foundation for people with learning disabilities is a useful addition to reducing that confusion. It focuses on continuing healthcare, a particular pot of money with some very specific rules governing how and on whom it [read the full story…]
The PAS-ADD (Psychiatric Assessment Schedule for Adults with a Developmental Disability) checklist is a 25 item questionnaire which uses non technical language and was designed to be used by support staff and families. The thinking was that it was these groups of people who spent the most time with the disabled person and so would [read the full story…]
The eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed that we’ve changed the name of this website and added a new logo: the Learning Disabilities Elf. What you may not know, is that this site is part of a broader website called the National Elf Service, which contains a number of other blogs that help health and [read the full story…]
Last year, the BBC screened its secret filming at the Winterbourne view home in Bristol which showed shocking scenes of abuse. The subsequent inquiry led to arrests and convictions, but there were concerns that this was not an isolated incident. The care services minister stated his determination to strengthen safeguards and the Care Standards Commission [read the full story…]
Sexuality in adults with learning disabilities is a subject that has only relatively recently been tackled in the literature. The researchers in this study were interested in sexuality in adolescents, and wanted to look at the attitudes and behaviours of mothers of adolescents and consider whether or not the presence of learning disability might affect [read the full story…]
