A Review of Community Learning Disability Health Services

This project's aim is to design a sustainable service which contributes to the reduction in health inequalities for people with a learning disability.

It’s supported by commissioners in Hampshire and Southampton with the aim of agreeing high level consistent commissioning priorities.

The project has three stages: a current state analysis, design workshops and then implementation.

The current state analysis is complete. Information has been collected from performance data, observations of the service, and RiO records to track patient journeys.

The second step - Design Workshops, which will determine what the service should be in the future - is also now complete. We ran two 5-day workshops w/c 21st and 28th January - and a wide range of stakeholders attended, including service users, carers, advocates, commissioners, local authorities and Trust staff.

The workshops used the information from the current state analysis and sought views on this, plus views on the purpose of learning disability health services, what are essential features in the future, and what is important to stakeholders in the future design of the service.

A summary was produced at the end of each day and posted on this page. Those who couldn't attend had the opportunity to see the summaries and offer their thoughts each day.

The third and final stage is implementation. A smaller 3-day workshop with senior staff from provider and commissioning organisations took place in late February 2019. It produced a plan for implementing a financially sustainable service which reflects the design features that were determined in stage two and takes into account the national and local priorities for developing outstanding specialist health services for people with a learning disability.

Cathy Baker, who works in our East Hampshire Community Learning Disability Team, explained why she’s got involved in the project:

“I’ve worked for Southern Health for two years now and, when I first started, I found the Trust’s administrative systems so complicated. I made suggestions to try and simplify the processes but hit a bit of a brick wall as this was just ‘the way things are done’.

"I see these workshops as a genuine opportunity to break through this wall and effect real change, for the better.  If we can find ways to streamline what we do and reduce waste – especially the duplication of unnecessary paperwork – we will give ourselves more time to do the things our service users really want us to do, and that has to be a good thing!”

Rosie Tayleure, a service user from the Southampton area, explains why she wanted to come along and contribute to the workshops: "I wanted to learn more about learning disability services and what is provided - and work out if this could this be improved. I really want to help improve the learning disability services for Hampshire."

Service user, Silas Pink explained why he's involved: "I want to learn stuff about the service and help with ideas. Everyone needs to take turns to speak and share ideas to make things better."