Learning disability and autism training for health and care staff – formal consultation launched

Wendy Burt, Scott Watkin and Jordan Smith as the Co-Chairs of Learning Disability England’s Representative Body acting on behalf of our members said;

“Understanding and properly listening to people with learning disabilities, autistic people or their families can be life-changing or life-saving so we are pleased the government has started this consultation on mandatory training.

We want to stop disabled people’s experiences being so different from non learning disabled people’s.

The training could be one part of stopping people’s experiences being so different.

We will look at the government’s ideas in detail but we are glad to see straight away that the consultation talks about changing health and social care staff attitudes and co-production in developing and delivering the training.

We will make sure LDE works with our members to know about this consultation and helps their feedback reach the Department Health and Social Care. We know that many LDE members have good practice, and evidence on what works to share as the Department asks”

The Department for Health and Social Care have started a consultation on training for health and care staff – it will be mandatory for some staff. That means they must do it as part of the training for their job.

This is happening after campaigns by families (like Oliver McGowans’) and recommendations from inquiries like the Learning From Deaths Reviews(LeDeR) programme

The consultation suggests the training covers 3 main areas:

  • Understanding Learning Disability and Autism
  • Legislation and Rights
  • Making reasonable Adjustments

There are questions on each chapter or the main points click here for consultation document.

The consultation is open until 12th April

You can find the easy read consultation here LINK

And full consultation here LINK

If you or your organisation are a member of Learning Disability England please do let us know if we can help you prepare a response and please do share your response so we can help bring together everyone’s ideas and main points across the membership.