LDIAG News www.ldiag.org.uk
Summer 2012
New group will meet soon The Learning Disability Implementation Advisory Group or LDIAG has not met for nearly 2 years. The group decided they needed a new group with new people and new things to work on.
Gwenda Thomas
Deputy Minister Gwenda Thomas said she would set up a new group to give her advice about learning disabilities. It has taken a long time to set up the new group. The new group is called the Learning Disability Advisory Group or LDAG. Welsh Government asked 12 people to be part of the new group.
Roger Banks
Sophie Hinksman
There are 2 new co-Chairs called Roger Banks and Sophie Hinksman. The new group met for the first time on 3 September 2012 in Cardiff. They talked about the rules of the new group and the work it will do. Samantha Williams is the Information Officer for the group and went to the meeting.
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What has the CB CoP been doing? The Challenging Behaviour Community of Practice or CB CoP had a meeting on 20 June. Special Support Clare Trudgeon and Sara Bassett from Aneurin Bevan Health Board talked about how they give special support to people with challenging behaviour.
“To catch the reader's attention,
They both work in a special team to support people that other services cannot help.
place an interesting sentence or quote from the story here.�
The team helps people with life skills like eating and talking, or getting out in the community. There are lots of different people on the team who all work together to help the person they support. The team talks to families about what the person needs. They also talk to people working in education and day services so that they can find different ways to support people. Clare and Sara showed some videos of the people they support and how it has helped them. Touch Trust Next, Dilys Price talked about the Touch Trust. (More on page 3)
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Touch Trust runs workshops for people with learning disabilities. The workshops help people to communicate and express themselves through touch. This means showing how they feel and what they are thinking. Touch Trust can also teach staff how to communicate through touch. “To catch the reader's attention,
There is also a Touch Trust College of the Arts for young people aged 19 to 25 at the Millennium Centre in Cardiff Bay. place an interesting sentence or quote from the story here.�
You can find out more about Touch Trust on the website www.touchtrust.co.uk. Special therapy Maria Leahy has a son with autism. She spoke to the CB CoP about how a special therapy called Applied Behaviour Analysis had helped her son. Therapy is a way of helping people to feel better or to live a better life. She showed videos of her son before the therapy, when he was having the therapy and after the therapy. (More on page 4)
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The videos showed how much the therapy had helped him. Winterbourne View
Prof Eric Emerson
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After lunch, Professor Eric Emerson from Improving Health and Lives: Learning Disabilities Observatory talked about Winterbourne View. He talked about the reports that had been written after what happened at Winterbourne View. Winterbourne View was a care home for people with learning disabilities and challenging behaviour. A BBC television programme filmed inside Winterbourne View. It showed people being abused by the staff working there. People who saw the programme wanted to know how this could happen. Some organisations looked into what happened to try to make sure it does not happen again. The Care Quality Commission, the Department of Health and the Learning Disabilities Observatory have all written reports about what happened at Winterbourne View. (More on page 5)
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The Care Quality Commission are supposed to check all care services in England to make sure they are good enough. They did an extra check of all the hospitals and care homes for people with learning disabilities after what happened at Winterbourne View. The report showed that lots of the hospitals and care homes were not good enough. The Department of Health’s report said that too many people were sent to live in hospitals and for too long. “To catch the reader's attention, place an interesting sentence or quote from the story here.”
This is not good. People should get the support and services they need in their local community. The report also found:
poor care planning
some people were not doing anything interesting or useful
too much use of restraint. This means holding people down to stop them hurting themselves or others.
Things will only change if people and organisations help to make things better. (More on page 6)
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This includes:
Commissioners. These are people who buy services.
Providers. These are the services like hospitals and care homes.
Workforce. These are all the people who work in services.
Regulators. These are the people who check services like Care Quality Commission.
Government.
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The report has a list of actions to make things better. The Learning Disabilities Observatory report showed that:
6 out of 7 people were living in hospitals or care homes where the care was not good enough.
Too many people were living in hospitals or care homes for a very long time.
Services run by the National Health Service or NHS were usually better than services run by other independent organisations.
Prof Emerson talked about what we had learnt from Winterbourne View (More on page 7)
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Nobody really needs to live in these sort of hospitals or care homes. So why do we keep sending people to live there? Because there are often not enough good local services to support people with challenging behaviour. Most people with challenging behaviour would not choose to live with other people with challenging behaviour.
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So why do we keep making people with challenging behaviour live together? Because services think it is cheaper and safer. But research shows that people have less challenging behaviour when they live with others who do not have challenging behaviour. There are usually reasons for people’s challenging behaviour. It is often a way of showing how someone is feeling about their life. Making people’s lives better usually makes the challenging behaviour better too.
(More on page 8)
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Most challenging behaviour starts when people are very young. This means it is very important to help children with challenging behaviour as early as possible. He then talked about what we needed to do next to stop it happening again. We need real stories to show how good support can help make people’s lives better. “To catch the reader's attention, place an interesting sentence or quote from the story here.”
We also need to show how giving people good support can save money in the future. Problems with senses The last presentation was by Dee-Arn Holzl from Merthyr Tydfil. It was about sensory processing. This means the way people’s senses work. Senses are seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching. Dee-Arn said that the way people’s senses work can change the way they behave. Some people have problems with their senses and this can lead to challenging behaviour. Dee-Arn then talked about some of the ways she helps people who have problems with their senses.
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Real Opportunities Conference Real Opportunities is a project that helps young people with transition. Transition is when you change from children’s services to adult services. The Real Opportunities project had its first annual conference on 3 July 2012 in Cardiff. More than 100 people came to the conference. Lots of different people spoke at the conference.
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They talked about what the project does and how it helps young people. Young people themselves talked about how the project had helped them. Real Opportunities helps young people aged between 14 and 19 who have a learning disability or autism. The project has staff teams in 9 parts of Wales:
Bridgend
Caerphilly
Carmarthenshire
Merthyr
Neath Port Talbot (More on page 10)
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Pembrokeshire
Rhondda Cynon Taf
Swansea
Torfaen.
The teams work with young people and their families to help them reach their goals in life. Staff support the young people in lots of different ways: “To catch the reader's attention, place an interesting sentence or quote from the story here.”
Transition planning
Person centred planning
Getting ready for work
Skills for daily life
Joining in and making friends
Special help with thoughts, feelings and behaviour.
Young people also get support from peer mentors. Peer mentors are young people who have had training on how to support others. They help with joining in and taking part at work, college or in the community.
(More on page 11)
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The project wants to make transition better for all young people in Wales. The Welsh Centre for Learning Disabilities is looking at how well the project works. It will look at how young people who have been helped by the project get on after transition. It will compare these young people to other young people who did not get help from the project.
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It will ask staff, families and the young people themselves what they think about the project. The aim is to find out how well the different types of support work. This will help to make transition services better. A young person from Caerphilly called Kyle Fox sang at the conference. Matthew Devinett from Rhondda Cynon Taf did the New Zealand rugby dance called the haka. Marcus Prowbert and his mum talked about how the project had made Marcus’s life better. There is a new website for the Real Opportunities project. (More on page 12)
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The English website address is www.realopportunities.org.uk. The Welsh website address is www.cyfleoeddgwirioneddol.org.uk. The website has 3 sections:
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1 section for young people
1 section for parents and carers
1 section for people who work with young people.
There is lots of useful information on the website. There is also a toolkit on the website. The toolkit has lots of the different tools that have been used to support young people on the project. If you want to see the toolkit and other information in ‘Resources’ on the website you will need to speak to Laura Davies. You can ring Laura on 01639 635650 or you can send her an e-mail to laura.davies@learningdisabilitywales.org.uk. Laura will give you a username and password so that you can look at all the information in ‘Resources’. (More on page 13)
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You can find out more about the project and join in on Facebook RealOpportunitiesProject or on Twitter @Real_Opps.
Key to Your Home Unlocking information about where you live and how you live
Learning Disability Wales Annual Conference 2012 Tuesday 13 and Wednesday 14 November 2012 Newport, South Wales
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This year our annual conference will be looking at housing for people with a learning disability. On day 1 we will be looking at where you live, the roof over your head and some of the choices you can make. On day 2 we will be looking at how you live, like personalised technology, safety in the home and ways to take part in the community. There will also be lots of interesting workshops on both days. For more information or to book your place please email Harriett harriett.johnson@learningdisabilitywales.org.uk or phone her on 029 2068 1160. To find out more or let us know what you think, please phone Sam Williams on 029 20681160 or e-mail: samantha.williams@learningdisabilitywales.org.uk. You can also have a look at the website: www.ldiag.org.uk