Estimates suggest that dysphagia affects 8% of all adults with learning disabilities and that 15% require some form of mealtime support.
Here we report on a study that set out to look at the association between the need for support with eating, drinking and swallowing difficulties and the use of primary and secondary healthcare services.
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Gerry Bennison explores a study on support planning by user led organisations and wonders about the implications for personalisation and equality of access to social care and support.
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Although the research base is small, it does strongly suggest that the attitudes of support workers can be key influencers of outcomes for people with learning disabilities and this would seem to be an entirely reasonable assumption. Here, Louise Phillips looks at a study which set out to not only explore the attitudes of a number of support workers in one service, but also to consider whether existing attitude measurement scales capture the range of attitudes expressed.
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In her exploration of a Canadian study into extra care housing for older disabled people, Jo Moriatry gives a critical view of the research and offers some insights into what it means for the UK policy and practice context.
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Lucy Simons reports on a meta-ethnography that explores what facilitates peer support for perinatal mental illness. Her key finding from appraising the review is that women who experience perinatal mental illness need support from the right sort of peer (i.e. women who have had mental distress in the context of motherhood) to make the relationship beneficial and to aid recovery.
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Sarah Carr summarises a study of user involvement and coproduction initiatives in secure mental health settings, which recommends schemes that build alliances, garner mutual respect and support communication between staff and service users in shared forums.
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Sarah Knowles appraises and summarises a thematic analysis of young people’s views of UK mental health services, which calls for greater involvement of young people themselves in redesigning services to be more engaging and accessible.
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Raphael Underwood reports on a thematic analysis of joint crisis plans, which explores what service users with psychotic disorders want in a mental health crisis or relapse.
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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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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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