Building Safety, Standards, and Trust

Blog from Ivan Olbrechts – Family and friends member rep

Learning Disability England has been supporting the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) as they try to increase the quality and safety of nursing.

They want to do this by improving regulation of nurses in advanced practice roles.

In nursing, advanced practice means registered nurses with extra education and training that mean they can practice at a higher level.

This includes carrying out tasks such as assessment, diagnosis, and treatment.

Read more  “Building Safety, Standards, and Trust”

Modernising The Mental Health Act

“The treatment of autistic people and people with learning disabilities, and the way in which black people are disproportionately targeted by the (Mental Health) act should shame us all.”

Wes Streeting, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care

Ivan Olbrechts, family and friends Rep Body member, represented Learning Disability England members at a recent Department of Health and Social Care ‘stakeholder event’ about the Mental Health Bill and has written a guest blog about it:

Read more  “Modernising The Mental Health Act”

‘We are aiming to be a lean, mean citizenship machine’  

Tim Keilty speaks about the reality of the organisation he is Chief Executive of, in a world of ever-tightening budgets…

Here they are again, providers moaning about the money. 

I work for a canny big organisation employing 350 staff to support 170 people.  We are a Co-operative and Community Benefit society with Charitable status.  We are not in it for the money.  

Read more  “‘We are aiming to be a lean, mean citizenship machine’  “

Welcome New Trustees

Learning Disability England wants to welcome some new people to it’s board of Trustees.

The Board of Trustees makes sure Learning Disability England does a good job and is chosen by the Representative Body.

On the 18th October three new people joined the board.

These people were:

Read more  “Welcome New Trustees”

“People are experts in their own lives”

Gary Bourlet and Amanda Fawcett, Membership and Engagement Leads for Learning Disability England share how they recently presented on self-advocacy at the Blackbelt National Advocacy Conference…

There are many different types of advocacy, from independent advocacy, to peer advocacy to what I would argue is the most important – self-advocacy!

Paid advocates are so important and I think could actually play a major role in supporting people with learning disabilities to self-advocate.

Read more  ““People are experts in their own lives””

“Our NHS is broken, but not beaten. Together we can fix it”

Blog by Ivan Olbrechts and James O’Rourke – Family and Friends Representatives of Learning Disability England

The new Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said that:

Our NHS is broken, but not beaten. Together we can fix it. “

Announced on Monday, 21st October, the government has asked the public, NHS staff, and experts to help ‘fix’ the NHS via a new online platform:

Change.NHS.uk

Read more  ““Our NHS is broken, but not beaten. Together we can fix it””