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 Advanced Clinical Practitioner Trailblazer group is pleased to announce that it has opened a consultation on the draft Apprenticeship Standard.

To give maximum opportunity for everyone to contribute, the consultation is available as an on-line survey at:

www.surveygizmo.com/s3/3574823/Advanced-Clinical-Practitioner-Apprenticeship-Standard-Survey

The consultation opened on 13^th June and will close on 25^th July 2017.

Could you please put this information through your networks and forums – thank you!

“Health Education England working across Kent, Surrey and Sussex (HEE KSS) is able to pay the fees for 6 students within the region to undertake the Postgraduate Diploma in Learning Disabilities Nursing at London South Bank University.  We know that the need for newly qualified LD nurses both nationally and locally is increasing as the Intellectual Disabilities workforce is facing a period of intense changes,  due in part to the Transforming Care Programme becoming embedded but also because of other factors including retirement age of the current workforce.

This PG Diploma is designed to challenge learners as it trains and educates future specialists, experts and leaders. Work placements for these students will be undertaken within the KSS region. More information can be found here:

http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/courses/course-finder/learning-disability-nursing-pgdip-msc

The deadline for applications through UCAS is 30th June.  The course code which the applicants need to select is B764 which is for PG Dip Learning Disability Nursing and our institute code is L75. The link  to the online applications site is:

https://www.ucas.com/ucas/undergraduate/register

If you want to apply but the deadline has passed (we know it is very tight), please contact Rhona Westrip, programme manager for the Intellectual Disabilities programme at HEE KSS in the first instance Rhona.Westrip@hee.nhs.uk – and she will give advice about moving your application forward.”

Councils significantly overspent their adult social care budgets last year after some savings targets proved “impossible” to deliver, directors have warned.

The annual budget survey by the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) found councils spent £14.2bn on adult’s services in 2016-17, £366m more than was planned. This was more than double the £168m overspend reported in 2015-16.

Councils plugged the overspends last year by transferring funds from their reserves or other departments. But the association warned that directors were finding it “increasingly difficult” to implement planned cuts in practice, with less than a third (31%) confident of delivering savings for this year.

http://bit.ly/2uh9kTy

Are you working with people with a learning disability directly? Or do you know people who do?

Mencap wants people with a learning disability to receive the right support to access and stay in work. To help make this happen we want to hear from people with a learning disability who are looking for work. We want to find out more about their experiences with getting support to help them find a job.

We have created a short survey and would like this to reach as many people with a learning disability as possible. If you know anybody with a learning disability who is looking for work, please share the survey with them! Please also share it with anyone else in your network who might know someone with a learning disability looking for work so they can share it with them.

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/mencap_employment_services

The survey will stay open until 15 July 2017. Its findings will support Mencap in their efforts to improve the employment support offer for people with a learning disability.