Tizard Centre Seminar Series: Dr Stuart Todd “And then they were dead! How? The last months of life of people with learning disabilities”

Tuesday 19 September 2017 – Dr Stuart Todd “And then they were dead! How? The last months of life of people with learning disabilities”


A research based understanding of what it means to have a learning disability is becoming more complete as death and dying have been incorporated into the research agenda.  Borrowing on the central notion of ‘transitioning’, this seminar will focus on the fateful transition in the levels of people with learning disabilities.  It will offer a historical context based on a study of death and dying in a Victorian asylum through which to appreciate the challenges of death and dying for modern learning disability service providers.  Data will then be presented from two recent UK based studies that focused on looking at the ways specialist and generic care services have responded to people with LD in the last months of their lives.  Key issues here are the distinct mortality profiles of people with LD and Downs Syndrome; low levels of expected deaths within this population; the end of life care outcomes for people with LD; the fragility of community based dying and the nature of later life care transitions.  the seminar will also briefly sketch out themes for future collaborative research.

Dr Stuart Todd is a Senior Lecturer in Learning Disability Nursing at the University of South Wales. His research interests have focused on three key themes:  the self-identities of people with learning disabilities, the lives and experiences of parents of people with learning disabilities over the life course; and the social and historical relationship between disability and death. 

 Please contact Jo Ruffels to confirm a FREE place

  e: J.Ruffels@kent.ac.uk | Tel: +44 (0) 1227 827955 |

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *