Learning disabilities

A short film aimed at carers which presents the story of two families and their experiences of person centred planning. The DVD also contains background information about person centred planning and contacts for further information.

BACKGROUND: Families/carers relinquishing the care of family members with a disability into the care of out-of-home respite facilities is an under-researched area in the disability field.

Increasingly greater numbers of older parents are providing care at home for their sons and daughters with intellectual disabilities. As attention needs to be paid to the supports needed by such families to assist them with their caregiving activities, it is prudent to identify the types of supports that will be needed when the parents are no longer able to provide care. Working with a cohort of older parent carers in Prince Edward Island, Canada, the authors undertook to examine older carer concerns and planning issues.

People with learning disabilities are increasingly outliving their parents. To avoid traumatic and inappropriate transitions from the family home in later life, services need to improve their relationships with families. Practical examples are given of how families are being supported to face the future. 

Older carers of adults with intellectual disabilities experience unique challenges. Outreach initiatives identify a high number who are unknown to support services and a case is made to proactively engage them to assist in future planning for their adult children. An earlier study by the authors suggested that, in Victoria, specialist case management programmes for older carers occupied a unique place within the service system.

This article is about carers being discouraged from performing regular breast examinations for women who have a learning disability and who are unable to perform it upon themselves. This follows guidelines issued by the Cancer Screening Programme in 2000. The article looks at the need to perform breast examination, draws on feminist thought and explores the possible reasons for the guidelines, focusing on issues of abuse, consent and who should perform the examination.

Little research has examined the extent to which active ageing is facilitated by family and nonfamilial support persons of older adults with intellectual disabilities. This study explores the role played by key unpaid carers/support persons of older adults with lifelong intellectual disabilities in facilitating “active ageing.” All key social network members conceived active ageing to mean ongoing activity.

It is ten years since Valuing People promised a ‘new deal’ for family carers. Valuing People was explicitly concerned to ensure a cultural shift in the way services worked with and conceptualised the role of family carers. It included specific objectives for involving families in local partnership boards, providing better support for them in their caring role and investing in family leadership nationally, regionally and locally. This article considers why there was a need for a more family-focused approach to support.

This paper describes a three‐phase study to investigate the experience and management of menstruation for women with learning disabilities. It focuses on the findings of the second phase of the study, which looked at the experiences of carers and health professionals. It describes the difficult issues that can arise when providing assistance around menstruation. The findings are discussed in relation to ideologies and sensitivities that exist around gender, sexuality and menstruation.

Overall life expectancy for women with intellectual disabilities (ID) is now significantly extended, and many will live long enough to experience menopause. Little is known about how carers support women with ID through this important stage in their lives. This study investigated carer knowledge of how menopause affects women with ID under their care and how they may help them to cope with it.