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The latest monthly statistics on the number of people with learning disability and/or autism in specialist inpatient units has been released today by the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC, see http://www.hscic.gov.uk/catalogue/PUB19062 ). Six months ago I wrote a blogpost on these inpatient statistics (see http://chrishatton.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/one-step-beyond-what-do-latest.html ). At the time the statistics suggested the number of people in these inpatient units was not decreasing, but commissioners reported that 37% of people had a discharge date within the next 6 months. I foolishly wrote that if this prediction was right, we should see a significant dent in the number of people in inpatient units in 6 months’ time. What’s happened? Well, on a nerd point, one big thing that’s happened is that the HSCIC have continued to try and improve the quality of the data they have. This leads to some complications when interpreting trends. This graph from the HSCIC executive ...

Lately, I find myself turning more and more to the Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce (a late 19 th century American rabble rousing journalist and writer) – see http://www.thedevilsdictionary.com/  for an online version. On the day the Department of Health published its response to their consultation “No voice unheard, no right ignored”, I found this Devil’s Dictionary entry: Consult, v.i. To seek another’s approval of a course already decided on The sad thing this, applying this to the Department of Health consultation response feels like a bit of a compliment, unless ‘the course of action already decided on’ includes ‘doing as little as possible’. This blogpost won’t be a comprehensive look at the consultation response (can I call it NVUNRI, which any fan of Shooting Stars will know how to pronounce) – others are better placed than me to do this well and it has been handily summarised by @AndyMcNicoll… Instead, this blogpost will contain some random reflections, in particular ...

Sorry – more new depressing statistics relating to social care and people with learning disabilities to share with you. This relates to the Safeguarding Adults Return – from 2013/14 the successor to the Abuse of Vulnerable Adults datasets (such charming titles). These basically report the number of people referred to social services for safeguarding reasons relating to different types of potential abuse, who made the referral, who the alleged perpetrator was, the nature of the alleged abuse, whether the alleged abuse was substantiated, and what (if anything) happened as a result. Up to 2012/13, information breaking all these things down specifically for people with learning disabilities was publicly available. A full report on this information is available in this extremely long report (Section 9 https://www.improvinghealthandlives.org.uk/securefiles/151106_1118//People%20with%20learning%20disabilities%20in%20England%202013.pdf ) with an easy read summary here ( https://www.improvinghe...

Nearly a year ago, I wrote a blogpost looking at the social care statistics for adults with learning disabilities up to 2013/14, called “It’s complicated” (http://chrishatton.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/its-complicated-whats-happening-in.html ). This week, I’ve been blogging (mainly) about some of the recently released social care statistics for 2014/15: ·         On the shrinking number of people with learning disabilities in official sight ( http://chrishatton.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/the-disappeared.html ) ·         On the shrinking number of adults with learning disabilities in paid employment ( http://chrishatton.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/crushed-by-wheels-of-industry-if-only.html ) ·         On the shrinking number of adults with learning disabilities getting personal budgets ( http://chrishatton.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/you-can-have-any-colour-as-long-as-its.html ) ·    ...

This post is the fourth in a week of blogposts looking at what’s happening for people with learning disabilities in England. For a bit of a change today, rather than looking at social care statistics, this blog is about the NHS learning disability nursing workforce in England. Learning disability nurses in both general hospitals and in community health services have been found to be important facilitators for people with learning disabilities getting decent healthcare from health services (see for example Tuffrey-Wijne and colleagues’ open access paper here http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/4/4/e004606.full  or McConkey and colleagues' work on health facilitators http://www.nationalelfservice.net/populations-and-settings/primary-care/introduction-and-uptake-of-annual-health-checks-across-northern-ireland-for-patients-with-learning-disabilities/ ). So, what’s happening to the workforce of nurses working specifically with people with learning disabilities in England? The Health and Soci...

This post is the third in a hasty series looking at what’s happening for people with learning disabilities in England, mainly using social care statistics for 2014/15 that have been recently released (see http://www.hscic.gov.uk/catalogue/PUB18663 ) . This short blogpost (just one graph) looks at social care personal budgets and adults with learning disabilities in England. As with the other statistics reported in this blog series, there have been some changes in the way statistics concerning self-directed support/personal budgets have been collected in 2014/15, but it is possible to produce some comparative data over time. The graph below reports the number of adults with learning disabilities aged 18-64 years who get: a direct payment only; a personal budget that partly involves a direct payment; or a council-managed personal budget (the statistics do not use categories such as Individual Service Funds). When interpreting this graph, it’s important to remember that up to 2013/14 the...

This post is the second in a haphazard series looking at what’s happening for people with learning disabilities in England, mainly using social care statistics for 2014/15 that have been recently released (see http://www.hscic.gov.uk/catalogue/PUB18663 ) . This relatively short post focuses on paid employment. Although the way these statistics have been collected have changed for 2014/15 compared to earlier years, comparisons over time are relatively straightforward. And it’s important to realise that these statistics are only for ‘working age’ (age 18-64 years) adults with learning disabilities who up to 2013/14 were ‘known’ to councils, and in 2014/15 were getting ‘long term support’ from councils (see http://chrishatton.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/the-disappeared.html for a discussion of this). So, the first graph we have below is the percentage of working age adults with learning disabilities in any form of paid employment (no matter how part-time). The percentage is shockingly low, dr...

Official statistics for social care in England in 2014/15 have recently been released (see http://www.hscic.gov.uk/catalogue/PUB18663 ). As with many other official statistics there have been major changes to the data collected in 2014/15, making last year something of a year zero and comparisons to previous years difficult. Nevertheless, in a series of blogposts over the next week or two, I want to use these and other statistics to explore what’s happening in social care (and in service support more generally) for people with learning disabilities in England. Changes in the data collected make errors of interpretation even more likely than usual, so please do say if I’ve got anything horribly or slightly wrong and I’ll update the post accordingly. In this post, I want to talk about the apparent disappearance of people with learning disabilities (particularly people given the label of mild or moderate learning disabilities) from the official gaze of statistics and services designed to ...