Walsall Integrated Learning Disability Services and

Pacesetters

Wednesday 31st March 2010

Pacesetters Team

Liz Staples – Lead Nurse &

Project Manager

Julia Kelly – Strategic Health

Facilitator & Project Lead

What did we do?

• Improved Access to Breast Screening Services

• Working on Cervical Screening, Bowel Cancer Screening and Diabetes management

• Produced ‘Easy Read’ information for Service Users, Carers and Professionals

• Improved Health Action Planning

• Improved access to primary and secondary healthcare services by adults with learning disabilities

Why did we do it?

• People with Learning Disabilities experience worse health than the rest of the population and die earlier

• A cultural shift [is required] to embed the principle that services need to be adjusted to suit individual requirements and raise expectations for improved health outcomes

Source: Health Inequalities experienced by people with Learning Disabilities – Andrew Nocon DRC, Liz Sayce RADAR, Zenobia Nadirshaw Professor of LD Thames Valley University

Service User Engagement

• Stakeholders were particularly key to this Project and so detailed plans for engagement and ongoing communication was developed.

PDSA methodology

• The principal concept is to start with small projects which are co-designed with the local Learning Disability Community, then use the PDSA cycle to develop the pilots further and spread the learning.

How did we start? Project One!Breast Screening

Increasing uptake to breast screening by women with LD – baseline audit

Identifying the population group Collaboration with breast screening

unit & radiography team Awareness training for mainstream

staff

Strategies Awareness training and health promotion for all women with learning disabilities, why we screen, how we screen, consequences of screening or not screening.

Strategies

• Appointments scheduled for static hospital unit

• Easy read invite letters

• Prefamiliarisation visits

• Longer appointment slots

Inspiration! - The Pacesetters philosophy!

• “….if you always do what you’ve always done…you’ll always get what you’ve always got…

A Learning Disability philosophy!

• “Tell me and I’ll forget, show me and I may

remember, involve me and I’ll understand”

• Old Chinese proverb

What do we need to do?

Long term goals?

Resources

The ‘trunk’

Drivers?

A storm?

Over ride a storm?

A change improvement idea

At our breast screening appointment!

Invitations

Pre-familiarisation visits

• Consultation with service users was paramount throughout the initiative

• Discussions identified that fear of the ‘unknown’ was a major factor to low uptake

• Group visits were arranged so that the ladies could meet staff, talk and see and touch the mammography equipment

Increasing uptake to breast screening

Health Promotion

Thank you