Search results

The purpose of this paper is to outline the role played by different aspects of the social, physical and organisational environments in preventing behaviour described as challenging in people with learning disabilities.

Conceptual elaboration drawing on research and practice literature.

Community placements for people with learning disabilities should develop the characteristics of capable environments. Such characteristics are associated with prevention of challenging behaviour and improved quality of life outcomes.

The notion of the capable environment may help to shift the focus from the individual who displays behaviour described as challenging to the characteristics of the social, physical and organisational supports that they receive.

Care pathways are being increasingly used in the national health service to outline an anticipated programme of care in relation to a particular illness, condition or set of symptoms. The purpose of this paper is to inform those using the service of what they might expect within what time frame. They are designed to reduce variation in practice and allow optimal quality of care across a variety of care settings. Care pathways map out a patient’s journey, providing coordination of services for users. They aim to have: “the right people, doing the right things, in the right order, at the right time, in the right place, with the right outcome”.

This paper outlines care pathways in relation to people with intellectual disabilities who present with behaviour that challenges.

It is likely that many people will have a lifelong need for support, so discharge from clinical services should only be considered if it is genuinely appropriate. Reductions in a person’s behaviours that challenge are likely to be a consequence of changes that have been made to the person’s environment and supports. Therefore, any reductions in the level or type of support that the person receives may lead to an escalation of the behaviour again.

Standards in relation to care pathways are presented.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse ratings data from the recently developed Learning Disability Needs Assessment Tool (LDNAT) to identify factors associated with specialist intellectual disability (ID) hospital admissions.

Ratings from 1,692 individuals were analysed and the LDNAT items differing significantly between inpatients and non-inpatients were identified. Statistical analyses on total scores derived from these items were used to calculate an optimal cut-off. This LDNAT inpatient index score was also confirmed via an alternative statistical technique.

On average, 18 of the 23 LDNAT item ratings were significantly higher in people with ID assessed as inpatients compared to those rated in community settings. Using the total of these items, the resulting LDNAT inpatient index was analysed. A cut-off score of 22.5 was calculated to be the optimal balance between sensitivity (0.833) and specificity (0.750). This was confirmed by calculating the Youden index (j=0.583). At this level 68 per cent of inpatients and 81 per cent of non-inpatient cases were correctly identified.

Currently there is a national (UK) programme to radically reduce the amount of specialist inpatient care for people ID. This will necessitate early identification of individuals most at risk of admission together with investment in improved, proactive community services if admissions to a diminishing bed-base are to remain manageable.

This study confirms the associations between mental health difficulties, challenging behaviour and specialist hospital admissions for people with ID, extending existing research by translating these findings into a clinically usable risk index.

A quantitative observational study was conducted. The purpose of this study is to examine the continuing adherence to the stopping over-medication of people with intellectual disability and/or autism guidelines for a cohort of outpatients seen in the outpatients’ clinics in the two teams who participated in this study to review the trend of psychotropic prescribing with a prescription indication along with the utilisation of non-pharmacological interventions.

Data was retrospectively collected over a period of one year for patients sampled conveniently in the outpatient’s clinic. The data was collected from two sites from psychiatric letters to the general practitioners (GPs), with the focus being psychotropic prescription indication and their adherence to British National Formulary limits, inclusion of a wider multi-disciplinary team or MDT (including nurses, psychologists and health support workers), use of Clinical Global Impression (CGI) scale for assessing medication side effects and response to treatment.

Most of the patients had at least one review in the previous six months. Antipsychotics were the highest prescribed medications without an indication for their use (13.3%) followed by anxiolytics and other medications. CGI recording was suboptimal, with 26% of the patient population did not have medication side effects and effectiveness monitored through this method. In total, 41% of patients were open to community nurses followed by other disciplines.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is an original article following the pilot study completed by the authors.

Community mental health services are of increasing importance for people with an intellectual disability (ID), as the government aims to reduce the number of people treated within inpatient services. However, due to limited evidence base, it is unclear which service models are most effective for treating people with both ID and a mental health condition. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to carry out a survey in order to gain a better understanding of the current state of ID community services.

The survey was e-mailed to 310 consultant psychiatrists based in England and whose main specialism was in ID. In total, 65 consultants responded to the survey with 53 complete data sets.

In total, 84 per cent of consultants identified themselves as working in a generic community ID team. The majority of services were not integrated with social care (71 per cent). Regional differences were found. In contrast to the rest of England, the majority of services in London were integrated with social care. The Health of the Nation Outcome Scale for people with Learning Disabilities (HoNOS-LD) was found to be the most common outcome measure used by services. A range of interventions are widely available across services including psychological therapies and specialist memory assessments. The survey also provides evidence for increased decommissioning of specialist inpatient units and a need for more robust community services.

Findings limited by low return rate (21 per cent) and because responses could not be matched to specific services. The implications of this survey are that there is still a variable level of integration with social care and that lack of integration could affect the quality of service. While HoNOS-LD is used consistently across services, there may be a need to supplement it with other outcome measures. There is a need for larger scale and higher quality studies in this area to strengthen the evidence base and therefore demonstrate the benefits of integration and specialisation more convincingly to health professionals and commissioners.

This survey presents an overview of the current state of community services for adults with ID in England. This information can be harnessed to add to revised approaches to mental health service models for people with ID.

This paper reports on the first three years of a community forensic team in Birmingham working with individuals with learning disabilities who have offended or are at risk of doing so. Using an interprofessional model, the team provided assessment, intervention and management, enabling individuals to live in the least restrictive environment. There were 113 referrals, the majority (94%) of whom were males. Only 26 had been convicted. The problems this raised for the team are discussed, along with the cost‐effectiveness, impact on admission rates and benefits of providing such a service. Two case scenarios are presented to highlight some of the issues encountered by the team. The paper supports the development of such services.

This paper reports on the development and service delivery of the Supported Living Outreach Team for people with severe psychiatric, behavioural and forensic needs in a city with a population of 1.1 million. The authors discuss the reasons why the team was formed, and the partnerships it has formed with local housing and care providers in order to enable people with very complex needs to lead ordinary lives in their local communities. The pathway of team involvement is described, starting with the initial assessment, setting up and monitoring of new schemes, through to discharge. Also described are the measures the team uses to monitor its effectiveness, the benefits the team has brought to the service, and the hurdles and barriers it has had to overcome on its journey to support people with complex needs to live safely in their local communities.

Aims to assess the development of clinical governance within NHS Trusts in the West Midlands by means of a cross‐sectional qualitative study based on in‐depth interviews and observation with all acute and non‐acute (n equals 43) Trusts in the West Midlands Region to determine the rating of Trusts’ competencies across five areas of clinical governance. There was a fourfold variation in the development of clinical governance across Trusts, measured against the identified competencies. Trusts with high competency scores showed a number of characteristics, including clear leadership at executive team level for the agenda, a collaborative style of working between clinicians and management, clinicians involved in management and a culture of openness and empowerment of front‐line staff. Concludes that attention must be paid to the organisational and cultural environment within Trusts, as well as resource issues, if high quality clinical governance is to become the norm

Needs led person centred services are the hallmark of high quality intellectual disability services. Commissioning mechanisms such as Payment by Results (PbR) have been established in acute health services. An outcome focussed version of PbR will be implemented nationally from 2012 in an incremental manner in mental health services for adults and older people. Though intellectual disability services are currently excluded, it is proposed that needs led approaches would improve the quality and efficiency of specialist intellectual disability services. This paper aims to suggest that this approach could be the key to commissioning and designing personalised pathways of care.

Health needs are scoped and care pathways are defined as primarily consisting of Needs, Interventions and Outcomes. The mandated cluster groups to be used for PbR in adult mental health and older people's services are extended to cover the non overlapping needs of people with intellectual disability to provide an integrated framework of health needs usually met by specialist services. A framework of interventions is suggested and components of “assessment” and “therapeutic” activities are outlined. An outcome framework is described. A case example illustrates the application of these components to design a care pathway to provide a personalised, needs led service.

It is possible to use the principles underlying PbR to commission personalised services of high quality, improved efficiency and thus greater value.

The principles underlying PbR can be used to commission personalised pathways of care in intellectual disability services at a time when this approach is being extended to mental health services nationally.

The 11th revision of the International Classification of diseases which sets global standards for defining, reporting and managing health conditions is under way. The International Classification of Diseases (ICD) underpinning principle of clinical utility is currently poor for persons with Disorders of Intellectual Development (DID) and mental disorders. This impedes access to healthcare resources; services and social inclusion thereby further aggravating their vulnerability. The purpose of this paper is to present a critical overview and evidence informed recommendations within the context of an international collaborative programme, undertaken by the Faculty of Psychiatry of Intellectual Disability, Royal College of Psychiatrists, UK with support from the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The authors carried out: first, a systematic review (SR) of literature, using PRISMA guidelines regarding the reliability, validity and utility of the ICD-10/Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) diagnostic criteria in people with DID (PWDID); second, a national and international consultation exercise with partners, stakeholders and experts; third, a multicentric survey of problem behaviours in PWDID; and finally, information dissemination/dialogues including presentations and workshops at key scientific events, consultation networking, data gathering and consensus building.

The SR revealed a dearth of robust studies – most consisting of weak research methodologies. Significant difficulties were highlighted regarding the application of diagnostic criteria in the current classificatory systems – particularly in people with severe/moderate DID. Recommendations supported the introduction WHERE APPROPRIATE of modifications based on observed phenomena (signs) in PWDID in lieu of reported symptoms to facilitate DIAGNOSIS AND better access to healthcare and the community. Heterogeneity precluded quantitative pooling and meta-analysis. The consensus building exercise globally revealed that problem behaviours were the commonest reasons for referral to healthcare services with significant numbers without a diagnosed mental disorder being prescribed psychoactive medication.

The consensus gathering exercise WAS SELECTIVE AND did not cover all of the 194 member states of WHO due to resource and time constraints and this constitutes the main limitation of our study. Based on the SR and expert consensus, the authors submitted evidence informed pragmatic proposals to the WHO aimed at addressing the shortcomings of the ICD-10. The key recommendations focused on improving clinical utility within the context of epistemic iteration which would consolidate and strengthen the future evidence base. It was also recommended that self-injurious behaviour should form a standalone sub category in view of its relevance for healthcare services and resources which underpin clinical utility.

The ICD-11 is a global, multidisciplinary and multilingual development for public health benefit with 70 per cent of the world's health expenditures assigned using this system for resource allocation. Currently mental disorders in PWDID can be misinterpreted, unrecognised and under reported resulting in barriers to access to treatment and healthcare resources. Conversely disorders may be over diagnosed when the inherent discrepancies between the chronological age and the developmental level of functioning are not considered. Conclusions and recommendations from this study will result in better diagnosis of mental disorders and healthcare resources in this population.

PWDID are a vulnerable sector of the population with an increased prevalence of mental health problems who are marginalised and discriminated by society. Early detection, treatment and management of these conditions will prevent further decompensation and stigmatisation.

To the best of the authors knowledge this is the first comprehensive, large-scale study which evaluates the ICD classificatory system within the context of clinical utility for PWDID, including experts and stakeholders from both lower/middle- and high-income countries. The international consultation/consensus building process culminating in the formulation of evidence informed recommendations, aimed at improving the clinical utility of the ICD-11 for this population, has the potential to improve access to appropriate healthcare and treatment and consequent enhancement of their quality of life.