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The purpose of this paper is to explore the importance of equal access to Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) for people with intellectual disabilities.

The paper identifies barriers to access and shows how a reference group can work to solve the barriers and increase access.

The paper evaluates the authors’ progress to date and how the authors plan to continue to take the work forward.

The paper highlights some of the factors responsible for the authors’ success and gives information that will be helpful to other areas who are interested in facilitating equal access.

The paper demonstrates how the focus of a reference group can drive improvements across services to improve access for people with intellectual disabilities to IAPT services.

Recent research has proposed a specific female phenotype within autism spectrum disorder (ASD). It suggests females exhibit differences in social communication styles with higher levels of camouflaging and compensatory strategies, as well as variance in restrictive repetitive behaviours (RRBs); however, many existing studies have been based on either small, disproportionate or child and adolescent samples, leaving questions about the specific phenotype. This study aims to explore the sex difference and phenotype in a clinic sample of individuals diagnosed with autism.

A service evaluation of sex/ gender differences on 150 historical ASD assessment reports (75 males, 75 females) using a 103-item questionnaire developed from a quantitative review of existing literature was undertaken.

Females camouflaged more significantly than males in five different areas (thinking how to act next, preparing conversation in advance, making lists of prompts/social responses, wearing a mask/acting, less monotone voice); however, these were not maintained in post-analysis correction.

This study points the evidence towards a different phenotype of Autism that is more common in women than men rather than a unique female phenotype.

The Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme was established to treat people with mild to moderate depression and anxiety and bring them to recovery. Although the Positive Practice Guide for people with intellectual disabilities was published in 2009, no geographical areas are listed as having a special interest in specifically rolling out IAPT to people with intellectual disabilities. Issues related to whether current IAPT services can meet the needs of people with intellectual disabilities are considered, along with adaptations that would be needed to ensure the service is accessible and meets the needs of people with intellectual disabilities.

There is little research addressing the delivery of training for health professionals who are interested in using cognitive-behaviour therapy (CBT) techniques as an adjunct to their current role. This paper describes the establishment and evaluation of a CBT training course to develop CBT skills in staff working with people with intellectual disabilities in Trust healthcare settings. The course would enable staff to learn how they could incorporate these skills into their daily practice to help them understand and work more effectively with people with intellectual disabilities.

A CBT training course was designed to teach staff the use of a number of basic and specific CBT techniques and principles that staff could use within their current roles. Specific issues in relation to people with intellectual disabilities were included, e.g. understanding cognitive deficits as well as cognitive distortions. The course ran for six sessions on a fortnightly basis, followed by a two-month follow-up session. Participants completed a pre- and post-assessment questionnaire and kept a reflective diary.

The training clearly focused on teaching skills that were feasible for staff to use in their own work settings. The evaluations, especially from the reflective diaries and the post-course questionnaires clearly demonstrated that this aim was achieved.

This was a pilot study as there has been no previously published evidence of using this approach within intellectual disabilities services. A further training course has been planned to continue evaluating the effectiveness of this approach.

The large, all‐purpose local authorities established by the Local Government Re‐organization Act, 1972, for England and Wales—Scottish local government re‐organization is yet to be completed—are operative; members have long since been elected and organization and staffing, if not complete, at least ready to commence. It is certainly the greatest upheaval since urban and rural sanitary authorities were set up about the middle of the last century. The last change of any magnitude was in 1934; small, however, compared with 1974. At that time, there were 62 county councils, 83 county boroughs and nearly 300 municipal boroughs, 29 metropolitan boroughs, more than 600 urban and about 500 rural districts; roughly 1,600 local authorities. The tremendous reduction in authorities by the present re‐organization illustrates the extent of the upheaval.

There is a move to make primary care models of mental health care more accessible to people with intellectual disabilities (IAPT, 2009) but little evidence of their ability of services to make the necessary reasonable adjustments or their effectiveness (Dodd et al., 2011). The purpose of this paper is to describe a pilot project to evaluate an anxiety management group co-facilitated by Least Intervention First Time (LIFT) Psychology and Community Team for People with Learning Disabilities (CTPLD) services.

Five people attended a nine-week anxiety management group, adapted from a course offered by LIFT services. The Glasgow Anxiety Scale (GAS-ID) and a skills and knowledge assessment were completed pre-group, post-group and follow-up to evaluate outcome and consider the ability of LIFT to make reasonable adjustments to deliver effective services for people with intellectual disabilities.

Participants showed no significant reduction in anxiety levels but improvements in their skills and knowledge. An evaluation of the adjustments to make the group accessible for people with intellectual disabilities identified that some were feasible if offering the group on a long-term basis, and others were not. The viability of future groups is considered.

The paper looks at the viability of making reasonable adjustments to psychoeducational groups within Improving Access to Psychological Therapies services to better meet the needs of people with intellectual disabilities, an area of limited research. It raises dilemmas and considerations for the future development of such services.