The Minister for Health and Social Services, today announced £2m in Welsh
Government funding to improve NHS services for people with learning
disabilities.
This new investment is part of Learning Disability: Improving Lives
Programme, which aims to improve the way services are delivered to
people with a learning disability in Wales. The programme of work
covers housing, health, education, transport and social care
services.
The £2m announced today will be used to achieve improvements
related to the health actions in the programme, over the next
three years, including:
- reduce the inappropriate use of medication and restraint
through increasing the use of a range of evidence based
interventions such as positive behavioural support
- improve the take up and quality of annual health checks
offered by GPs to people with a learning disability
- improve the capability and capacity of acute hospital care to
make reasonable adjustments enabling people with a learning
disability to access mainstream services
- to ensure that people with complex needs have timely and easy
access to learning disability specialist services including
trauma/crisis, the full range of accommodation including secure
provision and out of hours access
- implement the specialist and mainstream school nursing
framework – a set of evidence based standards for nursing in
schools.
Minister for Health and Social Services, , said:
“In our ‘Prosperity for All’ strategy we have committed to
improving the overall health and well-being of all individuals in
Wales.
“This new investment will support improvements in health services
for people with a learning disability to reduce health
inequalities and to help improve people’s health and quality of
life.”