Acute Liaison Nurses play a vital role in reducing the health inequalities faced by people with learning disabilities.
Changing Our Lives has been commissioned by Health Education England, now part of NHS England, to produce a national competency framework for Acute Liaison Nurses. As we know from the annual Learning from Lives and Deaths: people with a learning disability and autistic people (LeDeR) reports, people with a learning disability have much worse health outcomes than the general population, die much earlier and may face barriers in accessing health and care services. Having a Learning Disability Acute Liaison Nurse in post in the general hospital is one way a hospital trust can ensure improved health outcomes and guard against premature death.
The learning disability acute liaison nurse facilitates good patient care, making sure that complex reasonable adjustments are in place, facilitates communication between the patient and family and staff across the hospital, works with hospital colleagues to embed equality into healthcare practice and culture, has up-to-date knowledge of the most common health conditions affecting people with a learning disability, and advocates for the rights of the patient.
The competency framework was commissioned due to an awareness of a lack of consistency in practice of learning disability acute liaison teams in different parts of the country, and is intended to provide local services with a more structured evidence base to inform the design, delivery and deployment of learning disability acute liaison nurses.
Whilst coproducing A Uniform Approach we worked with 70 people with a learning disability, 30 of whom came from minority ethnic communities; 35 family carers, 11 of whom had a loved one with a profound and multiple learning disability; 45 provider staff, 55 learning disability nurses and 30 professionals. The framework is now complete and we are working with NHS England to coordinate its design and launch.
Postural care tool for learning disability nurses
Poor postural care for people with learning disabilities, especially those that struggle to move their body with ease, has been linked to ill health and in some cases to premature death. This tool guides the learning disability nurse through a series of questions so they can build a picture of the support a person needs to maintain good posture.
It was developed by Piers Baker and Sarah Clayton (Simple Stuff Works), based on an original tool created by Piers Baker and drawing on material created by Simple Stuff Works and Born at the Right Time.
