Experience of psychotropic medication and decision-making

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Jennifer Rose Oulton reviews a qualitative study that explores the experiences of psychotropic medication use and decision-making for adults with learning disabilities and their carers.

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Positive Behaviour Support: RCT finds no effect, but fidelity is poor

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Dave O’Regan reports on a recent cluster RCT of staff training in positive behaviour support to reduce challenging behaviour in adults with intellectual disability.

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“It can still happen here”: institutionalised abuse of people with learning disabilities

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Hannah Morgan reflects on a literature review of empirical evidence and wider social research, which seeks to place the abuse of people with learning disabilities in a broader cultural context.

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Staff training for challenging behaviour – what impact does it have?

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Training for staff in understanding and responding to challenging behaviour – must be a good thing… But how much do we know about the impact of this training on subsequent staff performance and levels of challenging behaviour?

Here, Louise Phillips looks at a review of the literature that set out to explore these questions in more detail.

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New charter of rights and mandatory commissioning framework recommended by Bubb Report

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The Bubb report has now been published. It recommends a new commissioning framework for services provided for people with learning disabilities and/or autism who are currently in inappropriate hospital units.

Here we take a look at the recommendations and ask if it is enough to bring about the change that is so clearly needed.

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For Connor: Day 62 out of #107days

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Here at the National Elf Service, we are committed to highlighting and discussing evidence based practice. Our usual approach is to focus posts around a piece of recently published research, but this post is different, responding as it is to the tragic events of last year that led to Connor Sparrowhawk’s death. Just over a [read the full story…]

Introduction of Positive Behavioural Support in assessment and treatment unit associated with significant outcome gains

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Background The recent position paper by the Royal College of Psychiatrists on the need for in-patient beds for people with learning disabilities was published as part of the response to the Winterbourne View scandal. The paper made it clear that it was important to make a very clear distinction between the function of in-patient support [read the full story…]

Implementation of learning about PBS brings about significant reduction in challenging behaviours

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We have posted previously about positive behaviour support (PBS) which includes a range of approaches based upon  person centred values which use quality of life improvements for the person as an intervention and an outcome measure. This Irish study set out to look at the components of positive behavioural support interventions to try to identify [read the full story…]

Positive Behaviour Support is effective in institutional and community settings review suggests

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How best to support people with severe learning disabilities and challenging behaviour is a question that has been thrown into sharp relief by the Winterbourne View scandal and subsequent pronouncements by Government about improving care for vulnerable adults. Clearly, managing risk and reducing harm are key components of the answer, but whilst necessary, will not [read the full story…]

Systematic adoption of positive behavioural support across a service system was associated with reductions in physical interventions

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We have posted previously about the use of physical interventions in services for people with learning disabilities and challenging behavioiur, with BILD estimating their use in around half of all people with learning disabilities and challenging behaviour. (BILD link). The researchers in this organisational case study were interested in whether the adoption of organisation-wide positive [read the full story…]