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/

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