sandr059

Uh oh, this Ferrero Rocher thing is getting out of hand. The ambassador has spoiled us with a veritable pyramid of material relating to people with learning disabilities and/or autism. This includes: A first report of findings from the Learning Disability Census 2014 – following on from the 2013 Census (but with some revised questions), this gained information from providers about people with learning disabilities in specialist learning disability inpatient services on 30 th September 2014 – available here http://www.hscic.gov.uk/catalogue/PUB16760 A report summing up in great detail what the ‘Transforming Care’ programme has been doing over the two years since it started, it also contains some information from the latest quarterly data collection from commissioners about how many people with learning disabilities are in specialist inpatient services. This also has an easy-read version https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/Winterbourne-View-2-years-on A report setting out future p...

Ah, yesterday the ambassador has spoiled us with a veritable pyramid of material relating to people with learning disabilities and/or autism. This includes: A first report of findings from the Learning Disability Census 2014 – following on from the 2013 Census (but with some revised questions), this gained information from providers about people with learning disabilities in specialist learning disability inpatient services on 30 th September 2014 – available here http://www.hscic.gov.uk/catalogue/PUB16760 A report summing up in great detail what the ‘Transforming Care’ programme has been doing over the two years since it started, it also contains some information from the latest quarterly data collection from commissioners about how many people with learning disabilities are in specialist inpatient services. This also has an easy-read version https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/Winterbourne-View-2-years-on A report setting out future plans for a rebooted ‘Transforming Care’ pro...

Well, you can blame @neilmcrowther for this one. In a recent pithy blogpost ( https://theindependentlivingdebate.wordpress.com/2015/01/08/home-is-the-scaffolding-of-the-self/ ), Neil posted a lovely quote from a chapter by Hilde Lindemann on the importance of home for honouring personhood. I was so struck by it that I dug out the chapter (in a book with the exciting but intimidating title of ‘Cognitive disability and its challenge to moral philosophy’, which has sat on my bookshelf for quite a while exuding a scary aura of cleverness), and it provided a way of making sense of so many things for me that I thought I’d share it. I’m aware that I have the enthusiasm of an ignorant newbie about this way of thinking, so apologies to those of you who are much better informed for whom this will be stating the bleedin’ obvious. The chapter discusses identities as bundles of narratives, constructed by/for/with a person within social and material webs; how important the continual revision of thes...

I believe amongst the young people (well, young compared to me) that there’s a contraption called Facebook where you can declare to the world, if you’re so minded, your ‘relationship status’. One of the options from the drop-down menu (wouldn’t a free text box be much more fun?) is “It’s complicated”, defined in the Urban Dictionary ( http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=It%27s+complicated ) as: “ Refers to a couple in an ambiguous state between " friends " and "in a   relationship ". May also be used to indicate dissatisfaction with an existing relationship.” [As an aside, I wonder how many people getting social care support would describe their relationship with social services in these terms?] Partly as a response to regular apocalyptic press releases from a range of organisations declaring the extent of current social care to be an abandoned municipal yurt in the car park of an out of town superstore (I may exaggerate slightly, but then so do many of t...