Celebrating learning disability awareness week in Kirklees
Our Kirklees community learning disability health team, including our Kirklees intensive support team, participated in an event for learning disability awareness week at the Mission in Huddersfield on Monday, providing information about the support they provide in Kirklees. This was an excellent event, which was well attended and received great feedback.
Our therapy teams provided information on Healthy Lifestyles and our nurses provided advice about health screening, including on breast screening which went down well with family carers and care staff.
Due to recent Department of Health concerns about constipation management, our nurses, alongside the Huddersfield HRI learning disability liaison nurse, did a presentation about bowel management. To make the issues more accessible to people with a learning disability, two of our nurses made a fantastic and interesting chocolate cake to demonstrate the different stool types – something that attracted a lot of interest and discussion. The cake helped to break down barriers and enabled people with a learning disability to talk openly about a potentially sensitive subject.
Paula Chilcott, clinical nurse prescriber, was also in attendance to raise the awareness of medication for people with learning disabilities and the STOMPLD project (stopping over medication of people with a learning disability).
The events were supported by nursing occupational therapy and physiotherapy health students on placement in the team, and was hosted by Kirklees Involvement Network.
