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.

A guide from Public Health England

This guide is for staff working in either pharmacy teams or learning disability teams and for anyone who supports people with learning disabilities. It summarises what the research tells us about the needs of this diverse group of people in relation to pharmacy services and what are the best approaches to use when working with them. It includes links to useful resources and good practice case studies.

http://bit.ly/2rX8k6l

The #KSSCOP17 Conference

The Kent, Surrey & Sussex Learning Disability Community of Practice annual conference took place on 15 June 2017 at the Charis Centre, Crawley.

It was a great day and lots of people came together to discuss how best to make sure people with learning disabilities get the right support so that they make the choices and decisions about the things they think are important in their lives and get great ongoing health and well being support.

This video was made during the day and shown at the end of the conference to sum up the energy and positivity of the day.

 

How do we build our Community? The 2017 Community Consultation

During our Conference on 15 June we had a big conversation about how we build our community. Many of the questions talked about are in this document: http://bit.ly/2qNf1Xd   This was the consultation document for everybody.

See more about the consultation on the Conference report page, here >

The 2017 Conference Workshops

The 2017 Conference saw a rich selection of workshops for delegates to choose from, some led by Experts by Experience, others by expert practitioners and professionals.

STOMP, Stopping The Over-Medication of People with a learning disability, autism or both – Jill Parker, VODG and Carl Shaw, NHS England
Do you have concerns about the amount of psychotropic medication some of the people you support are taking? This workshop introduces the STOMP pledge for social care and offers an opportunity for providers to consider how they can work more collaboratively with health professionals to tackle over-medication in their services.

You can watch videos of nearly all of the Conference workshops on our You Tube page, here >

Learning Disability Week 2017’s theme is employment – see this Remploy document, the Employer’s guide to learning disabilities >

Follow Learning Disability Week on Twitter by searching for #ldweek17

The Care Quality Commission has relaxed proposals to introduce a cap on the number of beds a learning disability service can have as a condition of registration.

The regulator attracted criticism after publishing draft guidance that appeared to restrict registration to facilities housing six people or fewer, in line with National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) policy on autism accommodation.

Following a consultation period, the CQC yesterday published an amended version of its document, ‘Registering the right support’, in which the language has been softened. The new guidance says that the CQC “will not adopt ‘six’ as a rigid rule” for providers of any service for people with a learning disability and/or autism.

http://bit.ly/2rvaEAq