Celebrating Learning Disability Awareness Week

As we celebrate Learning Disability Awareness week 2024 it’s important to reflect on this year’s theme ‘Do you see me?’ and consider what that really means for people diagnosed with a learning disability, their families, and the learning disability nurses who strive to offer person centred care to individuals across a wide range of settings.

It is estimated that 2.5% of our population have a learning disability and that equates to 1.5 million adults and children across England.

Within the Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership Trust (CWPT) we provide a range of learning disability services from community, respite, and inpatient services and therefore there are a range of diverse roles that our learning disability nurses hold.

These include, but are not limited to:

Community learning disability nurses for children and adults working to improve health, and address both physical and mental health inequalities.

Acute liaison and health facilitation nurses working in acute hospitals and with primary care services to ensure smooth pathways through physical health services, ensuring reasonable adjustments are made, the mental capacity act is adhered to, staff are educated around the needs of people with a learning disability, supporting the Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training, and addressing health inequalities and improving health outcomes.

Specialist health respite and day services where nurses work with individuals with a range of complex physical health conditions as well as mental health and behavioural needs.

Intensive support teams with nurses working alongside the community teams and transforming care teams to support individuals with complex behavioural and mental health needs to prevent hospital admissions and work with those returning to their community following discharge from inpatient beds.

The FACCT (Forensic Assessment Consultation Training team) supporting individuals at risk of being involved with the criminal justice system or currently involved i.e., have been arrested, on bail, on remand, have suspended sentences or about to be discharged from secure hospital or prison back to the community.

A specialist epilepsy nurse working to educate staff and working with complex cases.

Inpatient nurses working with children and adults often subject to the mental health act in specialist assessment and treatment service or low and medium secure services.

Specialist neurodiversity roles, in our autism and ADHD services

Nurses working as commissioners in the transforming care services with people at risk of hospital admission or about to be discharged from hospital back to the community.

We also have learning disability nurses in senior leadership roles, such as matrons, heads of nursing, associate director of nursing, assistant director of nursing and our current CEO is a learning disability nurse!

We’re incredibly proud to be able to have such a diverse range of Learning Disability nurses in our ranks. And on the theme of ‘Do you see me?’, I hope that our continued work to have Learning Disability nurses across our range of services helps to ensure that more people going into nursing will consider if there is something for them in the wide spectrum of learning disability services.

Throughout Learning Disability Awareness Week our teams welcomed clients and service users at open events which showcased some of the Art Therapy work they and their peers had created.  People created collages, portraits, and mood boards on the theme of ‘this is me’, and we manned several information stands around Warwickshire, Coventry, and Solihull. We also commissioned a service user who is a graffiti artist to paint two murals at Brooklands Hospital.

As a final tribute for Learning Disability Week, I would encourage everyone to listen to this poem which was written by Vicky Denny, [Nurse associate/ Registered nurse degree apprentice], at Ashby House (Adult Learning Disability Respite Service).

Cathy Watt, Head of Nursing – Community learning disability and autism, at Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Partnership Trusts.