LD Health Facilitation

About our service

We are a team of experienced Learning Disability nurses who work within the community across Birmingham. We support people who have learning disabilities in their own homes, in primary care and within the acute setting. We aim to support people with Learning Disabilities to access equitable healthcare and reduce health inequalities.

 

In order to achieve this, we work in two ways:

1. We support people face-to-face to educate both themselves and their carers around physical health. We help to reduce any barriers people may face when accessing health services and promote reasonable adjustments. We help people navigate through the National Health Service to receive an equitable service.
2. We also aim to improve services for people with Learning Disabilities by educating them around the health inequalities and health issues people with LD face. We design and use health promotion work to support the accessibility and understanding of health issues and services. 

 

What do we do?

Some of the things we do to support people with learning disabilities:

• We are involved in complex discharge planning.  We are also involved in hospital pre-admission planning.
• We advocate for people to have Hospital Passports to aid better understanding and communication of their needs.
• We advocate that reasonable adjustments are made.
• We support and advocate people to receive annual health checks.
• We support people who have fears around blood test by completing desensitisation programmes.
• We support people to access national screening programmes.
• We support people in hospital who face barriers when receiving investigation or treatment.
• We promote understanding by using accessible information to explain health issues and services.
• We advocate in people’s best interests and can attend best interest meetings to ensure the right treatment at the right time is provided.
• We design health promotion work and deliver it to people with LD across services such as at day centres, GP practices and care homes.
• We often engage in collaborative working with the wider NHS system to support the health outcomes of our service users.

 

 

Referrals

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.