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

#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]

HEE KSS have been asked if we can engage and add to this website:

www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/explore-roles/nursing/learning-disability-nurse

Do you employ any RNLD’s, that are willing to share their real-life stories to get added to this site. In particular, views from the perspective of nurses working in the independent, charity and private sectors would be helpful.

All responses to Emily Newsom – Emily.Newsom@hee.nhs.uk

Do you work with people with a learning disability? Or do you have an intellectual disability yourself? Are you interested in end of life care?

If so, you might like to share your views of a toolkit we are developing to help young people make care plans for when they are not able to express their view and when they have a life limiting condition. People with learning disabilities and their families may need help to think through questions about end of life. They may also find it more difficult to talk with care-givers about their wishes for future care.

The University of Surrey is working with Health Education England in Kent, Surrey and Sussex to develop a toolkit to help care-givers make advance care plans with children and young people with learning disabilities and their families.

To make sure the learning materials are as good as possible, we need the views of young people with learning disabilities and the people who work with them to take part in a workshop at the University of Surrey, to have your voices heard and make a real difference in this very important but often neglected area.

The workshop will be held at the University of Surrey on Tuesday 11^th July from 1 to 4pm. We can pay travel expenses and will provide lunch.

If you are interested to attend, please email Matthew Peacock – m.peacock@surrey.ac.uk – to book a place. We look forward to working with you.

Very best wishes, Ann Gallagher, Professor of Ethics and Care

The third 7 days of Action is about money, business and the inpatient healthcare economy. It’s about a kind of business that is becoming increasingly significant and increasingly powerful. It’s about a new kind of trade and new kind of commodity. We did think we’d start this week by looking at the work we’d done in analysing the finances of the inpatient healthcare economy and by giving you an overview of our report A Trade in People: the inpatient healthcare economy for people with learning disabilities and/or ASD. But the problem with starting a week about people with statistics and budgets, is that you forget about the person and their experiences. So we are going to start this week by asking you to stop and think for a moment. We are going to ask you to imagine what it must be like to be detained behind the closed doors of an Assessment and Treatment Unit.

You can catch up on the first 4 days here:

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