MENTAL HEALTH Access For All
People with learning disabilities or autism are disproportionately not getting the mental health support they need. Here, The National Care Forum highlights how the way the system is set up has resulted in difficulties accessing care, with a case study from one of its members Affinity Trust.
In its 2023 State of Care report, the Care Quality Commission identified that “Successive reports have shown how autistic people and people with a learning disability face barriers to equality when using services that are vital for promoting their independence and quality of life”. Similarly, a progress report from CQC in 2022 found that “challenges in the system, such as a lack of community services, prevented people from accessing early intervention and crisis support in the community, which can be particularly difficult for autistic people. They then end up in hospital as an inpatient.”
Long wait times, coupled with frequent misunderstanding, dismissal of mental health symptoms and lack of diagnosis, means that people with autism or learning disabilities continue to disproportionately suffer inequalities in getting the help they need. In some cases, this results in inappropriate hospital admissions, segregation and worse, sectioning and detainment under the Mental Health Act. The lack of community support caused by the chronic underfunding of and short-term approach to these vital services, together with the fact that adults with learning disabilities are statistically twice as likely to develop a mental health condition, means that far too many people with learning disabilities or autism are suffering unnecessarily.
https://www.cqc.org.uk/publications/major-report/state-care/2022-2023
NCF member Affinity Trust supports people with learning disabilities, autism, mental ill-health, physical disabilities, and other complex needs. They frequently find that the people they support struggle to obtain diagnoses for mental health conditions. Amanda Turner, Operations Manager at Affinity Trust, puts this down to the structure of the current system which means that people with learning disabilities presenting with mental health concerns are always initially seen by a learning disability nurse first rather than a mental health nurse.
https://www.affinitytrust.org/
“Adults with learning disabilities are twice as likely to develop a mental health condition.”
One of the people that Affinity Trust supports is a lady called Julie (not her real name), who has Down’s syndrome and associated learning disabilities together with a mental health
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www.tomorrowscare.co.uk
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