Supporting people with a learning disability and autistic people to live good lives

South West Social Care and Community Health Services - What does good look like when supporting people with a learning disability and autistic people to live good lives and access the support they need

Background to the event

• NHS England South West are working with local systems to develop two specialist bed based services in the region for people with a learning disability and autistic people who have co-existing mental health conditions that cannot be treated in community settings including people detained under the MHA 2003. This is to prevent people being sent a long way from home in order to receive treatment that cannot be provided in their local community.  There have been multi-agency workshops identifying the criteria for admission and the pathway in and out of the service. 
• Nationally there is emerging recognition of the impact of gaps in community services. The increased likelihood of people with a learning disability and autistic people living with more restrictive and costly packages of care and support, high risk of detention under the Mental Health Act when things are not going well in their life, and increased demand on Continuing Health Care funding.  There are many reasons for these gaps and neither this session nor the development of the inpatient services will address those in isolation, but the discussions will help local areas to think about how they can work together to bridge the gaps. 

The workshop

• This workshop will draw together a range of South West partners to identify and describe the preventative social care, community health services and workforce. The support that can help ensure, wherever possible, that people with a learning disability, autistic people and their families can receive the information, support, care and mental health treatment in their community and outside of specialist mental health hospitals.   
• We will be drawing on the recent work of the Ministerial Building the Right Support Advisory Group on What Good Looks Like. We will develop ideas to inform a framework of community services that will aspire to provide good support in preventing admission, facilitating discharge from hospital and in supporting people to live a good life in their community.  This will be made available to systems to support them and enable place-based conversations.

This is a conversation across the whole system, and we welcome:

• Community healthcare providers including Mental Health providers
• Commissioners from ICBs, Provider Collaboratives and Local Authorities
• People from Community Learning Disability Teams or Autism Teams across health, social care or joint teams
• Directors of Adult Social Services and Senior health leaders including Directors of Nursing, SROs and Dept SROs

In addition, there will be representation from people with direct lived experience and families with lived experience.

This workshop will be an in-person event facilitated by Partnership in Care and Health (a DHSC funded partnership between the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services and the Local Government Association) and in partnership with NHS England South West. 

We will need people to complete an immediate post involvement survey and a 6-month post involvement survey from Partners in Care and Health.

Questions about this event?

Name: Angela Metcalf

Email:england.learningdisabilityandautism-sw@nhs.net

Telephone:07730 391 768