Social Services: Learning Disability

(asked on 17th January 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the effect of social care for people with a learning disability on the level of avoidable admissions to hospital of those people.


Answered by
Caroline Dinenage Portrait
Caroline Dinenage
This question was answered on 22nd January 2019

Since the investigation into the abuse at Winterbourne View and other hospitals, there has been a cross-Government commitment to transform care and support for people with a learning disability or autism who display behaviour that challenges, recognising that people with learning disability achieve better health outcomes living in community settings, receiving social care support and community health services, than as inpatients.

In ‘Building the Right Support’, we have a plan to build community capacity to allow people to leave hospital (and prevent crisis and therefore admission) to ensure that people with a learning disability or autism are supported to live in the community.

The NHS Long Term Plan commits to implementing the ‘Building the Right Support’ plan in full, achieving at least a 50% reduction in inpatients (compared to the figure in 2015) by the end of 2023/24 and ensuring that every local economy has specialist community provision.

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