A new ‘Beyond Words’ Book Club is available, meeting on Friday 25 September. This is a wonderful opportunity for people to come together, and focus on social stories with the use of pictures – for people with learning disabilities and others.
The meeting is 1.30-2.30pm, at The Rossetti Room, Beach House, Beach Street, Herne Bay, CT6 5PT.
To join or to find out more please contact Sue at suec.carmichael@gmail.com or call on 07703770919 ‘Beyond Words’ Book Club | Beach Creative
NHS England is reshaping All Age Continuing Care (AACC), the umbrella term covering both NHS Continuing Healthcare for adults and Children and Young People’s Continuing Care. A recent meeting on this work flagged a gap: learning disability and neurodivergent clinicians are underrepresented in the conversation.
Beacon CHC is hosting a survey on NHS England’s behalf, open to commissioners, providers, people with lived experience, their carers, and anyone else with a stake in AACC. It explores the challenges people currently face within the system and asks for views on how care might be described, commissioned, and funded more consistently in future. Part of the engagement looks at whether “currencies,” a way of grouping people with similar care needs into clinically meaningful categories, could help make care more comparable across systems. NHS England has confirmed this work will not change who is eligible for NHS Continuing Healthcare or impose a single national model regardless of local need.
The survey takes around 30 minutes in total, including 15 minutes to read the background information first. It closes on 18 September.
https://www.beaconchc.co.uk/we-want-to-hear-your-views-on-the-future-of-all-age-continuing-care
If you work with, support, or represent people with learning disabilities or who are neurodivergent, please take the time to respond, and share it within your own teams and networks. Feedback gathered through this engagement will feed into a public consultation later this year.
The Kent, Surrey & Sussex Learning Disability Community of Practice are pleased to host an online event to promote the work and writing of Saba Salman, Paul Christian and Sue Ledger.
This hour long webinar, in recognition of Black History Month, will focus on Saba’s new book, Double Discrimination alongside a focus from Paul and Sue on the importance of sharing intersectionality stories and the idea of intersectionality strength.
Please join us on Wednesday 7 October 2026 at 12-1pm, register via Eventbrite
Do you know or support someone in Kent who has a learning disability, and would like to share their stories about love, relationships and the support they have received over the years?
This project is exploring how experiences of love, relationships and sexuality for people with learning disabilities have changed over time.
The research team would be keen to speak to people with learning disabilities, and people working in health or social care to hear their stories. They are keen that these stories and experiences are captured and not forgotten.
Please see attached flyer with contact details for more information.
Published on 14 July, this guidance sets out the core components it expects local systems to deliver so that autistic people and people with a learning disability can live well in their communities. It covers three areas: Health & Wellbeing, Education & Training, Home & Living Well and sits ahead of expected changes to the Mental Health Act, which will place more emphasis on community-based support.
The guidance builds directly on two earlier documents: Building the Right Support (2015) and the 2017 Transforming Care Service Model. The underlying principles carry over largely unchanged: Support should be person-centred, co-produced with people who have lived experience, needs-led rather than diagnosis driven, and delivered in a joined-up way across health, education, housing and social care. What’s asked of local systems is to review their existing support offers, identify gaps against local population need, and align commissioning accordingly, using tools such as Joint Strategic Needs Assessment. NHS England has said further, more detailed service specifications will follow, covering accommodation-based alternatives to hospital, enhanced support for autistic adults, children and young people with a learning disability.
For context locally, this sits alongside the RCN’s recent UK wide review of learning disability nursing, shared on this site last month, which sets out current workforce pressures in the field, and the ongoing work of the South East RNLD Workforce & Education Community of Practice. Readers interested in how community-based delivery and workforce capacity relate to one another may want to look at both documents together. The full guidance is available here:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/supporting-autistic-people-and-people-with-a-learning-disability-to-live-well-in-their-communities/
