Kent County Council launch new autism strategy for adults.

Kent County Council is launching its strategy for adults with autism on Tuesday, July 11 which sets out its future commitments and priorities.

In 2010, Government set out a requirement for all local authorities to have a strategy as described in the National Autism Strategy.

Across Kent, approximately over 13,000 individuals are living with autism and current estimates suggest over half these will have autism in the absence of a learning disability.  This strategy addresses these individuals.

The launch event will be chaired by Anne Tidmarsh, Director for Older People and Physical Disability and will include an introduction by Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care, Graham Gibbens

For further information about the strategy and any queries, please email SensoryandAutism@kent.gov.uk to learn more.

https://kccmediahub.net/kcc-launches-strategy-adults-autism745

Health checks for people with learning disabilities: toolkit from RCGP

The toolkit collects guidance and resources to help GPs, practice nurses and the primary administration team organise and perform quality Annual Health Checks on people with a learning disability.

http://www.rcgp.org.uk/clinical-and-research/toolkits/health-check-toolkit.aspx

There are also links to resources on helping people with learning disabilities prepare for their health checks and templates for Health Check Action Plans!

A Trade in People: The inpatient healthcare economy for people with learning disabilities and/or Autism Spectrum Disorder

In this report Mark Brown, Elaine James and Chris Hatton have gathered data from Freedom of Information requests and combined with other available data sources to analyse spending on hospital placements for people with learning disabilities and autism.  They explore the factors that influences people being kept in hospitals across the country.  They conclude that:

‘…data indicates that inpatient rates are being influenced by the decisions of healthcare entrepreneurs to locate in areas where house prices are lower and that once there, the length of their stay in hospital will be influenced by the care infrastructure that is in place. Namely the numbers of people who are inpatients, the number of CQC registered settings and the number of s117/CHC packages of care.

If considered in conjunction with the experiences of people with learning disabilities and their families and the content of a number of the Transforming Care Plans, it is clear to us that the way in which the healthcare economy has been encouraged to develop by recent governments turns people into commodities and liabilities. For local authorities and CCGs they are liabilities that they have often sought to export to other areas and for independent hospitals they are a commodity and source of millions of pounds of income and profit’.

You can access the report here:

http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/cedr/files/2017/06/A-Trade-in-People-CeDR-2017-1.pdf

The report was also summarised in a blog on day 2 of the current 7 days of Action Campaign, available here:

https://www.sevendaysofaction.net/our-campaigns/a-trade-in-people/a-trade-in-people/

How unofficial social policy drives change- a blog

Blog from Steven Rose back in May for Learning Disability Today is well worth a read and reflection Steven asks where are we now?  in relation to social policy that relates to and influences the lives of people with learning disabilities.  He writes that:

‘With the exception of the failing Transforming Care programme there is very little active official social policy relating directly to people with learning disabilities. However, if you look at the unofficial reaction to the very circumstances that prompted the ill-starred Transforming Care programme, the Winterbourne scandal, then you see the seeds of change being sown. Once again it is the activists, the thinkers, the radicals – people prepared to question the status quo – showing a way forward’.

 

https://www.learningdisabilitytoday.co.uk/how-unofficial-social-policy-drives-change

‘A Trade in People: The inpatient healthcare economy for people with learning disabilities and/or autism’.

#7DaysofAction 26th June – 2nd July 2017

In support of the third 7 Days of Action, the Centre for Disability Research at Lancaster University is publishing ‘A Trade in People: The inpatient healthcare economy for people with learning disabilities and/or autism’.

Brown,M. James, E. and Hatton, C (2017) A Trade in People: The inpatient healthcare economy for people with learning disabilities and/or Autism Spectrum Disorder Lancaster: Centre for Disability Research [pdf].

A Trade in people Easy read version by Rebecca Fish [pdf]