Healthy Lives

The Foundation for People with Learning Disabilities was concerned that, while some people were busy developing person centred approaches, they were not always including health issues. On the other hand, other people were starting health action planning, but not linking it with plans about all the other aspects of people’s lives.

We wanted to find out how to get people with learning disabilities thinking about the way they want to live their lives and the role that their health plays. We based our work on what Valuing People describes as two important ways of planning:

1. Person centred planning: listening to a person to find out what is important to them and what they want from their life, and then helping to make it happen

2. Health action planning: helping a person to be healthy and to get the right help

• What we did

• What we found

• Outcomes

• Further information

What we did

People with learning disabilities and family carers in five different areas of England worked with health and social care staff. Creative techniques were used to get people thinking about how they want to live their lives and the role that health plays.

Back to top

What we found

We found that there are four important issues that everyone needs to think about:

• Communication: how people let you know what is important to them, what they feel, and what they like or dislike
  

• Consent: helping people understand a health check or treatment and whether they want to say yes or no to it
  

• Sharing information: helping people to think about the information that is ok to share and what they want to keep private
  

• Risk and duty of care: helping people to think about different sorts of risks in life and how to manage risks while still living a fulfilling life

Sometimes people with learning disabilities, their families and staff from different backgrounds have very different ideas and ways of dealing with these issues.

It is important to help people understand and decide as much as they can themselves, to listen to their family and others who know them well, and to explore and understand different professional perspectives.

Back to top

Outcomes

The Healthy Lives materials and stories can be downloaded from the Healthy Lives section on the Valuing People website

Back to top 

Further information

We offer consultancy on improving services. More information about the consultancy we offer.

The Healthy Lives project was funded by a Shared Training Grant from the Department of Health.

Back to top