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This article summarises recent work, commissioned by the Department of Health, which estimated the future need for health and social care services for adults with profound multiple learning disabilities (PMLD) in England. This estimation process involved four stages: identifying children with SEN associated with PMLD; adjusting for the effects of child mortality; estimating the number of adults with PMLD in England; and estimating net changes in the number of adults with PMLD in England. The overall findings suggest sustained and accelerating growth in the number of adults with PMLD in England over the time period 2009‐2026 and hence the need and demand for health and social care services for adults with PMLD.

Eric Emerson's recently published research on the costs and quality of village, residential communities and supported housing should bring to an end an argument that has bedevilled learning disability services for a number of years. The most important questions raised by the research are arguably those that lie beneath the surface of the village community vs. ordinary life debate ‐ and also have an importance well beyond the learning disability field.

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/13595474200500008. When citing the article, please cite: Eric Emerson, Chris Hatton, (2005), “Deinstitutionalisation”, Tizard Learning Disability Review, Vol. 10 Iss: 1, pp. 36 - 40.

Despite changes in the nature of supported accommodation services for people with learning disabilities, little progress was made during the '70s, '80s and '90s in addressing the extent of unmet need. While the advent of Supporting People has more recently led to an increase in the volume of provision, unmet need continues to be a major concern to people with learning disabilities and their families. There is good reason to believe that, as a result of changes in the demographic profile of people with learning disabilities, changes in expectations and changes in the pattern of informal care, this issue will become substantially more pressing over the coming two decades. This paper attempts to estimate the nature and extent of increased need.

This article provides a summary of a report, The Mental Health of Children and Adolescents with Learning Disabilities in Britain (Emerson & Hatton, 2007). This report, based on the experiences of over 18,000 children aged between 5 and 15 years old found that one in three (33%) of children with learning disabilities are likely to have a mother with mental health needs and nearly half (47%) are living in poverty. Young people with learning disabilities also have fewer friends than other children living in Britain and are more likely to suffer abuse and be involved in serious accidents. The full report can be downloaded from www.learningdisabilities.org.uk.

Over the last 50 years deinstitutionalisation has dominated the development of social policy for people with learning disabilities in most of the world's richer countries. In this commemorative issue we will attempt to place what we have learned about the successes and failures of deinstitutionalisation in the light of three themes that are clearly evident in the work undertaken by Tizard and his close colleagues: the unrealised potential of people with learning disabilities, the importance of measuring and analysing quality in residential services and the value of applied research.

This paper provides an overview of the main results of a Department of Health‐funded research project which investigated the quality and costs of residential supports for people with learning disabilities. The main findings were that the adjusted costs of community‐based supports were higher than residential campuses and village communities; within community‐based provision there were no statistically significant differences between the adjusted costs of supported living, small group homes and group homes for 4‐6 people; community‐based provision and village communities offered better care than residential campuses; there appeared to be distinct benefits associated with community‐based provision and village communities; within community‐based provision there were benefits associated with smaller size and supported living arrangements.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the first 15 months of operation of an innovative specialist national public health observatory for intellectual disability.

The paper provides a narrative account of aims and achievements of the service.

In the first 15 months of operation the observatory has: made available to those involved in commissioning health and social care services, a wealth of information on the health needs of people with intellectual disabilities; identified specific improvements that could viably be made to increase the quality of future information; and begun working with local agencies to support them in making the best use of the available information.

People with intellectual disabilities experience significant health inequalities. This paper describes an innovative approach to helping local agencies make the best use of available information in order to commission services that may reduce these inequalities.