LD Community Nursing

What is Community Nursing?

Learning Disability Nurses work to provide specialist healthcare and support to people with learning disabilities, as well as their families and staff teams, to help them live a fulfilling life.

 

 

What is the aim of the service?

Community Learning Disability Services provide specialist healthcare to adults with learning disabilities whose needs cannot be met by mainstream services alone. These teams help to ensure that people with learning disabilities receive specialist health services when they need this, enabling effective care and treatment when there is a concern about their physical or mental health.

 

Community Learning Disability Services work in collaboration with other professionals and agencies to ensure that the person’s health needs are met.

 

Community nursing work within a multidisciplinary approach and collaborate with the person, family, and carers to support people with learning disabilities to achieve good quality of life outcomes.

 

Community learning disability nurses are involved in health surveillance, health promotion, health facilitation, health prevention and protection, health education, and healthcare delivery.

 

Person-centred principles are at the heart of community nursing., focusing on the need to put the person and their surrounding family or carers at the heart of a service, which is personalised and designed to meet their needs.

 

 

What support is offered?

Community Learning Disability Nurses work across the lifespan from the age of 19 through to older adults.

 

This population has a diverse range of health needs, including physical disabilities, neurological conditions, and specific syndromes. They play a vital role working across both health and social care settings. Their main roles include:

• Improving and maintaining a person’s physical and mental health.
• Reducing health inequalities that lead to the premature death of people with learning disabilities.
• Reducing barriers to health and care services to promote an individual’s wellbeing.
• Supporting positive access to and enabling reasonable adjustments in mainstream services.
• Supporting individuals in living a fulfilling life by supporting them to access health and social care services: assessing, planning, delivering, effective evidence-based interventions. and evaluating holistic, person-centred care.
• Supporting individuals with behaviours of concern, promoting positive behaviour support.
• Provide specialist advice and person-specific training to people with learning disabilities, families, carers, and service providers across the statutory, independent, and voluntary sectors.

 

 

Referral criteria

Eligibility criteria:

• Aged 19 years and over (or within 6 weeks of their 19th birthday).
• Diagnosed learning disability and needs specialist health support that cannot be met through mainstream services even with the use of reasonable adjustments.
• Registered with a Birmingham GP.
• Moving into the Birmingham area with a Birmingham residential postcode and an identified Birmingham GP, but are unable to register with the GP until they have moved into their property (for example, a service user discharged from hospital or a complex case moving into the area and going through the transfer or handover of care process). Confirmation will be required for service users eligible for s117 that the transferring Learning Disability Service have had a conversation with the local Integrated Care Board (ICB).

 

A referral to the service can be made through a number of means including a patient’s GP, carer, or family member.

 

You can make a referral by calling the Learning Disability’s Single Point of Access:

• Phone:  0121 466 4980
• Email:    BCHNT.ldreferrals@nhs.net.

 

This will require completion of a referral form that needs to be sent through.