Written Statement: Improving health services for people with a learning disability in Wales

As part of this Government’s commitment to improve the health and wellbeing of people in Wales, I am pleased to announce additional funding of £2 million, available over the next three years, to improve NHS services for people with a learning disability.

In 2018, we launched a comprehensive cross-government programme of work: “The Learning Disability Improving Lives Programme”.  The programme was informed by a wide-ranging review that examined how services for people with a learning disability could be strengthened.  The review made twenty-four recommendations for action across housing, health, education, transport and social care. All of these recommendations were accepted by the Cabinet and work is now progressing to deliver them all over the next three years.

The £2m announced today will be used to achieve improvements related to the health actions in the programme, over the next three years, including –

• Reduce the inappropriate use of medication and restraint through increasing the use of a range of evidence based interventions such as Positive Behavioural Support
• Improve the take up and quality of annual health checks offered by GPs to people with a learning disability
• Improve the capability and capacity of acute hospital care to make reasonable adjustments enabling people with a learning disability to access mainstream services
• To ensure that people with complex needs have timely and easy access to learning disability specialist services including trauma/crisis, the full range of accommodation including secure provision and out of hours access
• Implement the specialist and mainstream school nursing framework – a set of evidence based standards for nursing in schools
  These improvements should make a real difference in people’s lives, improve outcomes and reduce health inequalities.

This additional funding compliments the £100 million investment being made through the Transformation Fund and forms part of the £192.4 million announced in the 2019 – 2020 budget to deliver strong, sustainable services and take forward our vision outlined in A Healthier Wales.