Learning Disability Today
Supporting professionals working in learning disability and autism services

Worries remain over learning disability services in GP consortia

News last week that the number of adults with learningdisabilities receiving an annual health check has risen to 50% isgood, but it still means that half of them aren’t getting a checkthat they are entitled to. And this is additionally worrying giventhe planned introduction of GP consortia. The figures, collected bythe Department of Health and published by the Improving Health andLives Learning Disabilities Observatory, found an 8% rise,year-on-year, in the number people with learning disabilitieshaving the health check they are entitled to. To me, that isn’tmuch of an increase. This was the third year that the health checksshould have been available, so GP practices have had more thanenough time to get their collective act together on this. However,like so many other aspects of learning disability care, how goodyour treatment is depends on where you live – and if you’re luckyenough to have a GP practice with someone who takes an interest inlearning disabilities. As professor Jan Walmsley noted in a recentarticle in Learning Disability Today, the key to successis often effective leadership within a practice – someone who takeson responsibility for health checks and devises a way ofundertaking them and puts systems in place to ensure patients withthe practice, know about the checks. But all too often this doesn’thappen. As Professor Eric Emerson, co-director of the NationalSpecialist Learning Disabilities Public Health Observatory, noted,coverage rate in the bottom 10% of primary care trusts (PCTs) is24% or less. That’s a lot of GP practices that don’t do many healthchecks. While it isn’t solely down to GPs to ensure people havehealth checks – other professionals working in PCTs and in learningdisabilities need to encourage service users and carers too – itdoes make one worry about what will happen when GPs take overcommissioning of services. Would this sort of statistic bereplicated in other areas of healthcare? Ever since the governmentannounced plans for GP consortia last year, one of the main fearshas been that specialist services, such as those for people withlearning disabilities, could suffer. While the decision to includehospital doctors and nurses in consortia is welcome, there arestill fears that if there isn’t, for example, a champion for peoplewith learning disabilities, then they could lose out on thespecialist services they need. Worries such as this – and it isn’tjust within learning disabilities, other specialist areas ofhealthcare, such as mental health, have similar concerns – need tobe addressed before GP consortia are operational. For me,specialists in learning disabilities should be involved in everyconsortium, if not as a direct part, at least in some sort of aconsultancy role. As the take-up for health checks proves, thereisn’t the knowledge among GPs, about learning disabilities, forthem to be able to commission services effectively on theirown.

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