Erstwhile Mental Elf blogger, Ian Cummins, Senior Lecturer in Social Work at Salford University, joins the Social Care Elf to examine a study on the perspectives of service users, psychiatrists and carers on community treatment orders.
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Ioana Cristea critically reviews a recent meta-analysis of Internet-based CBT for patients with chronic somatic conditions. She concludes that the review authors are offering an overly positive interpretation of their results, and that we need more high quality studies before we can recommend online cognitive behaviour therapy for this population.
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For his first blog, Robin Miller, Senior Fellow at the Health Services Management Centre, University of Birmingham examines a Canadian study on place and older people’s volunteering and considers the implications for third sector policy.
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In her first Social Care Elf blog, Sarah Carr looks at an evaluation of the Time to Change anti-stigma campaign and discovers some new findings on discrimination against those living with mental health problems.
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The Bubb report has now been published. It recommends a new commissioning framework for services provided for people with learning disabilities and/or autism who are currently in inappropriate hospital units.
Here we take a look at the recommendations and ask if it is enough to bring about the change that is so clearly needed.
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Knowledge about sexuality is a key factor in helping people develop healthy relationships, maintain their sexual health and avoid potentially abusive situations, but how much do sexuality education programmes for people with learning disabilities help fulfil these aims?
In her debut blog, Sian Anderson looks at a review of literature which looks at the effectiveness of sex education programmes and educational materials developed for people with mild or moderate learning disabilities.
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In his debut blog, Martin Webber, Reader in Social Work at the University of York, asks how we can meaningfully measure quality of life with and for people living with mental health problems.
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The NICE scoping guidelines on multimorbidity now thankfully include people with learning disabilities. However, the original scoping draft specifically excluded them, despite NHS England and the Department of Health commenting on the first draft.
Here, Pauline Heslop, one of the authors of the Confidential Inquiry report and a key campaigner to get people with learning disabilities included in the scope, talks about some the issues this raises.
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Active support is about ensuring staff have working practices and organisational procedures to improve levels of participation and engagement in activities.
In her debut blog for the Learning Disabilities Elf, Louise Philips describes a study which set out to look at whether the quality of practice leadership was a factor in developing active support.
Louise also sets out an excellent breakdown of exactly what practice leadership is what managers need to do to ensure this framework for practice development is robust.
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What needs to be done to ensure quality services for adults with profound and multiple learning disabilities and how can organisations ensure that this is done consistently?
Here, Nick Burton describes the findings of an Australian study that uses observational methodology to look in great detail at what was happening for a number of people in small 24hr staffed houses for four to six people.
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