What works for whom in support planning by ULOs?

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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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Extra care housing vs nursing homes for disabled older people

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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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Community treatment orders and the limits of freedom

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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Carers policy and practice: What about ‘former carers’?

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In her debut blog, Mary Larkin, Senior Lecturer in Health and Social Care at the Open University, examines a piece of qualitative research exploring the experiences of former carers and discusses what it might mean for policy and practice.

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Advance care planning for people with advanced dementia

It's important that practitioners don't let dementia get in the way of other health problems, such as depression or anxiety. 

Clarissa Giebel, Researcher and PhD student at the University of Manchester, writes her debut Elf blog on a qualitative study about the experiences of advance care planning amongst family caregivers of people with advanced dementia.

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Measure of confidence in providing psychological therapies for people with learning disabilities could help with outcome measurement

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We report on a recent study, which involved developing a measure of confidence in delivering psychotherapy for people with learning disabilities.

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Health Professionals’ views on care pathways for adults with learning disabilities

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The health inequalities of people with learning disabilities are well documented in the literature, with increased risks for many physical and sensory health issues as well as mental health issues and responses from health services have often been poor, as documented in the Michael Report. In recent years, the healthcare pathways approach has been introduced [read the full story…]

Women with learning disabilities describe negative experiences of sex and sexuality

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A short while ago, we posted about the development of a tool to help understand the sexual knowledge of people with learning disabilities which was piloted in a secure services setting. There is a growing literature which focuses on issues of abuse, contraception or sex education, but there is little which has looked at how [read the full story…]

Experience of adolescent siblings of brothers with autism spectrum disorder explored

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The authors of this qualitative study were interested in looking at the experiences of growing up with a brother or sister with an autism spectrum disorder from the perspective of their siblings. What they did was carry out a number of semi-structured interviews with 12 typically developing adolescents who had a brother with an autism [read the full story…]

Needs of carers and supporters must be acknowledged to ensure good support to bereaved people with learning disabilities

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In recent years, a number of studies have begun to explore bereavement and grief in people with learning disabilities. Hollins and Esterhuyzen (1997) for example in the late 1990s reported the results of a matched control group study into the reaction of people with learning disabilities to bereavement, which found highly significant differences significant differences [read the full story…]