The government asked David Pearson to lead a Taskforce on Social Care.

A Taskforce is a group of people working on one thing together.

The job of this Taskforce was to give the government recommendations on what will help Social Care services do a good job with Coronavirus now and over the winter.

The Taskforce worked for a short time to find ideas quickly.

The taskforce made recommendations on how to help solve the problems from supporting people through Coronavirus, especially if things get worse again over the winter.

The Government is planning to do work on changing how all Social Care works later on.

The Taskforce set up 8 Advisory Groups.

The groups looked at what is important on some issues.

For example:

• Older People
• Carers and family members
• Black and Minority Ethnic Community members

There was an Advisory Group that looked at what needs to happen for people with Learning Disabilities and Autistic people. 

The focus of this group was on adults and adult social care.

They have written a report that they sent to the Taskforce.

You can read the report by clicking here.

The Taskforce has written their report. 

The report has 52 recommendations on what they think should happen to make social care support work well.

There are actions for government, Councils, the NHS and support organisations.

You can read the report here.

There is not an easy read version yet. We will share that when it comes out.

The government has also written a report called the Winter Plan.

This says what Councils and support organisations should do to help people they work with keep safe through winter and Coronavirus.

It also says what help the government will give Councils and support organisations.

You can read that here.

The Advisory Group for people with learning disabilities and autistic people have written about the Taskforce report.

They say that people with learning disabilities and autistic people are not included in the taskforce recommendations.

They say there must be action to make sure people with learning disabilities and autistic people get the support they need during Coronavirus.

You can read what the Advisory Group has said here:

Easy Read here

Full version here

Learning Disability England agrees with the Advisory Group Co Chairs letter.

Learning Disability England helped set up the Advisory Group and lots of members were part of the work. 

We think the government and Councils and the NHS must take action now to make sure people with learning disabilities, their families and supporters are not forgotten.

We will work with our members to raise that and get the changes people need.