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Board meetings, committee meetings, team meetings, planning meetings. With so many meetings to attend, social care staff often feel they have little time left to work with clients.

No doubt some senior council officers sighed when the learning difficulty white paper Valuing People was published in 2001.¹ Their sighs weren't in response to the white paper's laudable aims but because it heralded a further round of meetings. Valuing People stipulated that all councils in England had to establish a learning disability partnership board by the following October. The Department of Health pledged the boards would play a vital role in transforming antiquated learning difficulty services.


Valuing People says the boards are "responsible for overseeing the interagency planning and commissioning of comprehensive, integrated and inclusive services that provide a genuine choice of service options in their local community".

The major difference between partnership boards and other forums is that people with learning difficulties, their carers and supporters must be included on them. They take their places alongside community development, education, employment, independent providers, health, housing, and leisure staff and are involved in the planning of services.

So, after more than one year in existence, how are partnership boards doing, and what sort of problems are they experiencing? Are the efforts of some local authorities eclipsing others, and what should be done to strengthen boards' work?

Jean Collins, director of Values into Action, a campaigning group for people with learning difficulties, says senior social care staff may feel "partnership boards are just something else they have to go to" but key decision makers must play an active role on boards if they are to succeed.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the main problem partnership boards have is how they engage with and support people with learning difficulties and their carers. Some councils - deliberately or accidentally - are excluding this group from board meetings.

Eve Rank, a commissioner for the Disability Rights Commission, has a learning difficulty. She says some partnership boards are "tokenistic" because, although people with learning difficulties are included on them, little is done to enable them to contribute to or challenge decisions. "I know of people who are threatening to resign from partnership boards because they are so unhappy," she says.

Collins says the inclusiveness of partnership boards varies greatly. "Some boards are relishing the challenge of finding ways to make people with learning difficulties feel included and involved," she says. "But we hear reports that others expect them to turn up to meetings without giving them any support." Having board members with learning difficulties and failing to support them is just paying lip-service to Valuing People's objectives, she adds.

David Congdon, director of public affairs at learning difficulties charity Mencap, agrees that some partnership boards are finding it more difficult than others to make their work accessible to people with learning difficulties and their carers. He supports the idea that service users have their place on partnership boards and says more should be done to improve their accessibility. "People with learning difficulties and their parents are able to challenge the board and are not just there to do their job," he says.

The professionals and people with learning difficulties on Norfolk's partnership board are in the fortunate position of having a positive working relationship. Amanda Reynolds, Norfolk Council and Norfolk Primary Care Trust joint director of learning difficulties, says this takes sustained effort and admits it has not been plain sailing.

"At first, decisions still got made about services outside the board meeting and we've had to challenge that," she says. "Sometimes we make mistakes but we talk about them and work things out."

Norfolk's partnership board has 35 members. This includes eight people with learning difficulties and three of their parents; six chief executives of primary care trusts; a housing director; the chief executive of the local Connexions service; and a private sector provider. Reynolds says the variety of high-level staff attending the board adds gravitas to it and has increased its effectiveness. In turn, she adds, being on the board has improved the work the senior staff do within their own organisations. "The care trust chief executives have said the skills they've developed from working with people with learning difficulties are directly transferred to working with other client groups."


Doncaster's partnership board is not at the same stage as Norfolk's, according to the council's learning difficulties service manager, Peter Collier. He is responsible for overseeing the agenda of the boards, which Doncaster's head of community care Joan Beck chairs. Collier says the board initially had problems with producing reports in a format that its members with learning difficulties could understand. Collier says the council resolved this by funding a new service using a specifically developed set of core symbols to translate all the board's written information. They are so pleased with the service that the council hopes to make it into a social firm to provide work for people with learning difficulties.

Collier says the board is also trying to increase the number of people with learning difficulties it consults so the services provided by all the board's members are more appropriate.

Including all the necessary agencies on Doncaster's board has been a challenge. Collier says the local learning and skills council and Connexions service are not yet involved because of the "sheer pressure of their workloads". He adds that the agencies are not reluctant to join the board and is confident they will do so in the months ahead.

The experiences of Norfolk and Doncaster show that the success of partnership boards depends on the commitment from every agency involved. But what steps can boards take to improve the way they operate?

Rank says boards should look to consult a wider range of people with learning difficulties and not just depend on individuals involved in self-advocacy groups. "People who live in rural areas and residential homes are likely to be left out," she says. "Self-advocacy groups don't know how to change their services for the better if they have no experience of them."

She also wants to see the government provide specific funding so people with learning difficulties can attend boards. "The Department of Health should dip its hand into its pockets to help," she says. "If people with learning difficulties can't physically get to a meeting then it's not accessible, is it?"

Collins adds weight to this. She says it must be made easier for people with learning difficulties to access existing financial support so they can take their places on boards. Her call stems from Values into Action's experience of having to distribute £1.2m of government grants to learning difficulty self-advocacy groups over the next three years. She says many of the applications it has already received request money so that individuals can attend boards. "Boards are funded through their local authority whose responsibility it is to ensure that people with learning difficulties have all the support they need to be a fully involved board member," she says.

Clearly the sector supports the concept of partnership boards, but doubts remain over prospects for their success in the long-term. There is also the question of how much influence councils are prepared to allow them. Collier says: "Boards will vary in their robustness depending on whether statutory organisations let them make decisions about their areas of responsibility."

After all the time and effort involved in establishing partnership boards, Collier still believes they are worth it: "The decisions we are making now are much more informed and are open to more scrutiny. Our services better meet the needs of the people we're trying to help."

¹ Department of Health, Valuing People: A New Strategy for Learning Disabilities for the 21st Century, DoH, 2001