Category: Health and Wellbeing

Books Beyond Words – ‘Loving Babies’ Book Launch

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Kent Surrey Sussex Learning Disability Community of Practice event will be hosting the new Beyond Words book launch at the event at Kingston University on 1st December.

Beyond Words is delighted to be launching the second word-free picture book in their series on maternity and parenting. Loving Babies is the much-anticipated follow-up book to last year’s Having a Baby. Expertly co-created and trialled by professionals and experts by experience, Loving Babies is a picture story showing the realities and triumphs of early years’ parenting.

The book is designed to be used by people with learning disabilities or who find pictures easier to understand than words. It depicts two different households caring for and loving their new children. Loving Babies and Having a Baby can be used together to open conversations about pregnancy, parenting, and having children.

At the event, Baroness Hollins will be presenting this new publication and in their will be a lunch time book club to explore this new publication. 

Loving Babies Book Beyond words cover

 

New Guest Blog post – Oliver McGowan Training, A Midwife & Mothers perspective.

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Hayley Coffey has kindly shared her reflections on undertaking the Oliver McGowan e-learning training, her role as an academic, a midwife and a mother, the implications for education and clinical practice and ultimately autistic people and people with learning disabilities. 

This blog can be found by clicking here

If you would like to submit a reflection on enabling and supporting people with learning disabilities to live healthy safe and fulfilled lives, please see details for doing by clicking here. 

SUPPORT NEEDED: VODG is calling on the #health and #socialcare workforce to share their views on how we can reduce the reliance on psychotropic medications

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The essential role of the health and care workforce in reducing reliance on psychotropic medications – ‘STOMP’ and ‘STAMP’

STOMP (Stopping Over Medication of People with a learning disability, autism or both) and STAMP (Supporting Treatment and Appropriate Medication in Paediatrics) are national projects, launched by NHS England and involving many different organisations, aiming to stop the overuse of psychotropic medicines. 

It is estimated that on an average day in England between 30,000 and 35,000 people with a learning disability, autism or both are taking prescribed psychotropic medication without appropriate clinical justification. 

This is a medication which results in alterations to perception, mood or consciousness. Long-term use of these medicines puts people at unnecessary risk of a wide range of side effects including weight gain, organ failure and even premature death.

We have launched a questionnaire to hear from colleagues across the health and care sector, including family carers, about your experiences of using STOMP and STAMP within your job roles and how awareness and understanding of STOMP and STAMP could be improved. 

Understanding the views of health and care professionals with experience in supporting people is essential to identifying opportunities and building solutions to prevent the overuse and inappropriate use of psychotropic medications.

The questionnaire is open now until Friday 16 December 2022.

This project is a collaboration between VODG, the National Development Team for Inclusion (NDTi), Learning Disability England (LDE) and Skills for Care and is funded by Health Education England. 

Find out more on our project page here: www.vodg.org.uk/resource/stomp-and-stamp-the-essential-role-of-the-health-and-care-workforce-in-reducing-the-reliance-on-psychotropic-medication.html   If you have questions about the survey or would prefer to talk through your views with a researcher, please email research.policy@vodg.org.uk

Books Beyond Words prize presentation

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As a part of the launch of the Kent Surrey Sussex Learning Disability Community of Practice in June, we offered an incentive for participants to complete the electronic evaluation forms.

This period has now closed and we are beginning to sort through your feedback, more details of this process can be found by clicking here. If you’d like to be involved in this process please email us at info@ldcop.org.uk

Through a process of random selection of all those that submitted evaluations we are pleased to advise that Lindsey Griffiths from Sussex Partnership Trust has won a six month free subscription to Books Beyond Words application.

For more information on the application, click on the picture below.

BBW pic

Learning Disability Workshop Conference

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During 2015 the Kent and Medway Learning Disability Community of Practice in partnership with East Kent Hospitals Clinical Education and three experts by experience have been running half day workshops for mainstream healthcare professionals.

The aims of the programme has been to explore definitions of learning disabilities, the evidence base and legal frameworks, with a view to encouraging participants to explore what ‘reasonable adjustments’ might mean in their work context. More details of these can be found here.

The outcome of this project is a conference to report back on the outcomes, and for individuals and teams to share how they make adjustments for people with learning disabilities. We are pleased to share the National Clinical Director for Learning Disabilities at NHS England Dominic Slowie will be opening the event.

The target audience for this event is non-learning disability professionals.

Please see the flyer below.

Workshop Conf flyer 2016