People with a learning disability or autism may be kept in hospital or a treatment unit because of the way they have behaved.
Sometimes these people are held for too long, making the person with a learning disability and their families very unhappy.
There have been some changes to how the Department for Health and Social Care lead on the work to stop people going into specialist hospitals or help people leave after treatment with good community support.
This has been called the Transforming Care programme before.
They are now calling all the work Building the Right support.
This is the name that has been used before for the national plan.
The national plan came from the Building the Right Support evaluation in 2018.
What has changed
How the work is checked has changed. There will now be:
A Delivery Board chaired by the Minister of State for Care, Helen Whately.
The Delivery Board met for the first time in February 2021 and will continue to meet every 3 months.
An Advisory Group of people with lived experience and their families – supported byHealth and Wellbeing Alliance partners.
A Stakeholder Update Forum .
The Forum will meet quarterly, and brings together stakeholders to share updates and to provide advice and challenge.
Learning Disability England is part of the stakeholder group and will share regular updates with members.
To help stop people from being admitted to secure units and kept there for too long, a guide called Helping People Thrive was created.
Helping People Thrive features stories about people with a learning disability or autism who were kept in hospital for too long but now live happily in their own home.
Helping People Thrive also features advice for people who work with and support someone with a learning disability.
This advice tells them how they can help stop people with a learning disability from being kept in hospital or a treatment unit for too long.
Helping People Thrive was created by the Department of Health and Social Care with a lady called Baroness Sheila Hollins.
Baroness Sheila Hollins is a professor who studies how people with a learning disability think.
#right2home is a campaign to keep the Whorlton Hall scandal on the political agenda, and press the government to act on its promises.
It is led by self advocates and family campaigners.
#right2visit is a website of useful resources from the #right2home campaign.
The resources are to help people and families understand visiting rights during the Coronavirus pandemic.
Simone Aspis, Director of Changing Perspectives, has made a VLOG about the challenges people living in institutions are facing during the pandemic.
We Are Human Too is a campaigning group made up of self advocates with learning disabilities in the North East.
The group was formed after the abuse found by CQC at St Johns hospital in December 2020.
You can find out more by watching We Are Human Too’s video here.
Do you now live at home after being kept in hospital for a long time?
Do you know someone like this?
If you were kept in hospital for a long time but now live at home, we would love to hear your story.
To share it with us, please email info@LDEngland.org.uk and tell us a little bit about yourself.
You can also call us on 0300 111 0444 for a chat about your story.
Thank you.