Recently in Learning Disabilities Category

Quick straw poll: Has the delivery of frontline adult social care services remained high on the agenda for your organisation, despite the economic crisis?

A large majority (84%) of social care workers and managers at the Transforming the Adult Social Care Workforce: Putting People First conference in London on Tuesday said yes.

Today: Rise in number of children reporting sexual assaults by women to Childline; BBC West Midlands investigates parents with learning disabilities fighting to keep their children.

The BBC is reporting cuts in day care services for adults with learning disabilities are to be given further consideration by Dumfries and Galloway Council.

It will be interesting to see how many more stories like this will follow in light of the recession.

  by Daniel Lombard

"Many people still do not recognise and accept that people with learning disabilities, like anyone else, want and need personal and sexual relationships... Yet the evidence is that people with learning disabilities have very few relationships and limited opportunities to form or sustain them. People are often lonely."

Valuing People Now, HM Government, January 2009

By Sally Gillen

It seems no time at all since BBC viewers complained about former Blue Peter presenter Caron Keating on the grounds their children could not understand her Northern Irish accent, the suggestion being that, despite her talent, she should be replaced by one of the many accentless presenters employed at the time. In the 1980s the (in)famous BBC presenter voice reigned and anybody with the faintest hint of a regional dialect would be barely tolerated. 

by Anabel Unity Sale

In a week full of dreadful news (what on earth is happening in Georgia?) I finally read some good news in Metro today. Kenny Cridge has become the world's oldest living man with Down's syndrome after reaching his 68th birthday. When he was born doctors thought he was stillborn and assumed he was dead.

by Natalie Valios

About a third of 300 people surveyed would not want a care home for people with learning disabilities and related mental disorders next door, consultants PIELLE reveal this week. This rises to 40% among people with children. The irony was that 39% believed society discriminates against people with learning disabilities.

by Amy Taylor

While some people with learning difficulties continue to live in long-stay hospitals, all of them must be helped to move into supported living or residential care by April 2009 - five years after the original deadline for the hospitals' closure, some ex-residents are now becoming elderly.

This represents a dilemma for adult services departments which is only just starting to come to the surface.

by Keith Hassell

Barry George was an accident waiting to happen. A loner diagnosed with six personality disorders and having learning disabilities and epilepsy was vulnerable to having his behaviour misinterpreted.