Reducing the risk of health deterioration for people with a learning disability

People with a learning disability can often be reliant on health and care staff, including social prescribers and non-clinical colleagues, to help them manage their needs and support them to access services. They also experience greater health inequalities compared to the general population.

Healthcare staff including those in non-clinical roles can now access the Caring for People with Learning Disabilities elearning – a free online training programme that aims to reduce preventable causes of ill health, as well as the health inequalities that people with learning disabilities face.

Developed by the West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership in collaboration with NHS England, this training comprises four sessions which have been selected as important areas of learning:

1. Constipation: Constipation is a common health issue for people with learning disabilities for a number of reasons and this resource provides advice and support for carers about why this might be and how they can reduce this for the people they are supporting.
2. ReSTORE: One of the issues highlighted for people with a learning disability or autism is that communication isn’t always good between a service user and a service. This can result in a person not being able to communicate their health status effectively or in a timely way. Supporting people to understand and inform the right person at the right time when someone with a learning disability is becoming unwell is one of the ways that we want to help colleagues. Carers can also use other things to support the information they give to a health professional; this is called ReSTORE2 mini project. Within this training module we can support you to understand how to use the pulse oximeter as a communication tool to get your concern across to a health professional to get the right support at the right time.
3. Annual Health Check: Annual Health Check for people with a Learning Disability from the age of 14 is an opportunity to have a full, head to toe examination to make sure that there are no undiagnosed health issues.
4. Reasonable Adjustments: Reasonable adjustments are required under the Equality Act to help ensure that people who have a disability get the right support to be able to access health services. This session will help carers to gain a good understanding of what reasonable adjustments are and what you can do to support people to get these put in place.

We are also pleased to advise that the elearning will soon be available for unpaid carers. We will share further information about this as it becomes available.

You can find out more by visiting the Caring for People with Learning Disabilities training pages on the NHS Learning Hub.