The NHS Dorset Learning Disability and Autism Team is responsible for delivering the all age NHS Long Term Plan Programme for people with a learning disability and/or autism in Dorset.
Easy read fact sheets
NHS Long Term Plan for Learning Disability and Autism
Learning Disability Annual Health Checks
The Learning Disability Annual Health Check aims to improve the health and wellbeing of people with learning disabilities, as they often have difficulty in recognising illness, communicating their needs and using health services.
If you have a learning disability you can get extra support when visiting your doctor. They can make reasonable adjustments. NHS England » Reasonable adjustments. All you have to do is add your name to the Learning Disability Register at your GP surgery.
If you are over 14 years old, have a learning disability, and are on the learning disability register you should have an annual health check.
Getting a health check with your doctor will help to keep you healthy.
All parts of the Annual Health Check are voluntary. You need to give your consent before anything happens.
At the end of the health check the doctor or nurse will give you a Health Action Plan to help you stay well. Keep the Health Action Plan in a safe place and bring the Health Action Plan with you to your next health check.
Dynamic Support Register
Dorset has a Dynamic Support Register for children, young people and adults with a learning disability and/or autism to help you get the right support as fast as possible when it is needed.
The register is about checking that your care, treatment (and education if applicable) is right. If it isn’t meeting your needs, this process can look at what changes can be made to help and to prevent crisis. It helps services work together with you, your family and your network to look at what extra help and support you might need and can plan their support around this for you locally and at home.
Most people with mental health difficulties or challenging behaviour can live well at home, in their community and may never need to go into a specialist hospital for assessment or treatment.
To be referred to the Dynamic Support Register, you will need to give written consent. If you have a social worker or a health practitioner supporting you, they can talk to you about going on the register and can make a referral for you. You can also send us a self-referral enquiry.
A lived experience view of the Dynamic Support Register Care Education and Treatment Review policy – NHS England
Care (Education) and Treatment Reviews
There are two versions of the Care and Treatment Review. One is for adults and is known as the Care and Treatment Review (CTR) and the other is for children and young people and is called a Care, Education and Treatment Review (CETR).
A CTR/CETR is a meeting to check that a person’s care and treatment is meeting their needs.
A CTR/CETR may be held for anyone with learning disabilities, autism or both who may be at risk of being admitted to hospital or who is already in a specialist learning disability or mental health hospital.
These are in place to make sure that people get the right care at the right time and are not admitted to hospital unnecessarily.
For Care (Education) and Treatment Reviews, please email: ctr@nhsdorset.nhs.uk
Learning from Lives and Deaths – People with a Learning Disability and Autistic People (LeDeR)
What is LeDeR?
The Learning from Lives and Deaths – People with a Learning Disability and Autistic People, or LeDeR, is a service improvement programme for people living with a learning disability. Created in 2017, it was formally known as the Learning from Deaths Review Programme and is funded by NHS England and Improvement. The programme – a first of its kind – was created to improve care, reduce health inequalities, and prevent premature mortality of people with a learning disability, but as of autumn 2021, it will include improving services for autistic people too.
LeDeR reviews are about looking at the life of a person with a learning disability who died and finding out about the health and social care services which that person received throughout their life. It is not a mortality review as some people might think. Its purpose is not to find out why that person died nor is it an investigation into their death.
We look at the person’s life and the care they received to support our important goal and commitment to improve services where possible. We do this by searching for potential areas which require improvement, areas we can learn from, and examples of good practise which can be replicated across the country to help reduce inequalities in care for people living with a learning disability, and essentially, reduce the incidence of them dying prematurely or dying earlier than they should.
A key part of the LeDeR programme is to support local areas to review the deaths of people with learning disabilities (deaths include from age 4 and above), helping to promote and implement the new review process, and providing support to local areas to take forward the lessons learned in the reviews in order to make improvements to service provision.
The LeDeR programme also collate and share anonymised information about the deaths of people with learning disabilities so that common themes, learning points and recommendations can be identified and taken forward into policy and practice improvements.
