Background The Mental Capacity Act (2005) provides a legal framework for assessing capacity in individuals. Where an individual is shown not to have capacity to make a specific decision at a specific point in time, it also provides a framework for decisions to be made on behalf of that person, in that person’s best interest. [read the full story…]
This systematic review of psychological therapies for borderline personality disorder (BPD), conducted in Spain, takes an interesting approach to reviewing the literature. Unfortunately, there appear to have been challenges in translating the systematic review from Spanish and the text can be difficult to follow at times. This is a real shame as it is an [read the full story…]
Background Recent events have highlighted the increased risk of abuse faced by people with learning disabilities. Local authorities regularly collect data on adult protection referrals and one study has looked at trends that have emerged from analysis of this data Last year, we posted about a study based on in-depth interviews focusing on the experience [read the full story…]
Criminology has used strain theory as a way of looking at how certain social structures within a society may produce pressure on citizens to commit crime, identifying strain as either structural, e.g. processed at the societal level ,or individual referring to difficulties experienced in moving towards satisfying needs There has been little attempt to use [read the full story…]
The cognitive interview has been developed to help with memory retrieval, specifically in the criminal justice system to address concerns about the unreliability of eye-witness accounts. It can consist of a number of techniques for helping people to recall specific incidents, for example asking the interviewee about general activities and feelings at the time they [read the full story…]
We have posted previously of the role of attributions in the way support staff respond to challenging behaviour, with studies looking at inconsistencies in responses and the impact of specific attributions on helping behaviour The researchers in this Scottish based study were interested in exploring this further, and in particular looking at the extent to [read the full story…]
Considering the issues relating to consent to participate in research will apply to people with learning disabilities in the same way as to any other ‘human subjects’ , but they are often excluded from research on the basis that researchers perceive ‘learning disability’ as an automatic exclusion criterion, assuming this means lack of capacity to [read the full story…]
We have posted previously about end of life issues for people with learning disabilities, for example, pointing to the impact of training in palliative care as well as to resources such as the films made by Change for the dying matters coalition that can be used to help include people with learning disabilities in discussions [read the full story…]
This new report from the Nuffield Trust is the first output of a project developed with the Audit Commission and NHS Confederation. This first output is the result of qualitative research to capture learning from earlier periods of financial deficit within the NHS, with a view to preparing for the financial challenges ahead. The second [read the full story…]
Previous work to consider the issue of older parents of adults with learning disabilities has identified that a significant proportion are lone carers, often with a wide range of health problems of their own, and reporting high levels of anxiety as a result of their caregiving responsibilities. The researchers in this study set out to [read the full story…]
