Customize Consent Preferences

We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below.

The cookies that are categorized as "Necessary" are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site. ... 

Always Active

Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.

Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collecting feedback, and other third-party features.

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

No cookies to display.

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customized advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyze the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.

No cookies to display.

Saba Salman: Laws need teeth and oversight by real experts

What does the new government need to do?

Woman at GP reception counter

It is not too early in the tenure of the new Labour government to question how it could help to improve the lives of people with learning disabilities.

Leaving aside the obvious, thorny issue of social care reform and funding – this isn’t looking good, given Keir Starmer’s admission in August that the autumn budget will be “painful” – one strategy is to involve people and their families in drawing up solutions.

One policy area in need of focus is health inequality; people with learning disabilities have an average life expectancy more than 20 years less than members of the general population.

A collaborative approach from policymakers would make positive, sustainable change more likely. As independent nurse consultant Jim Blair writes, those directly impacted must be engaged in drafting health policies.

Direct collaboration in this way offers the powers that be the greatest chance of finding out exactly where the gaps are – and how to respond.

Laws alone do not prevent discrimination or appalling failures in care, as Mary O’Hara reminds us. But specific learning disability legislation could help if it had teeth – enforceable policies – and if it were monitored by an expert panel with direct experience, as well as regulators.

Research without sense

It is not just the authorities who fail to include the real experts, as Chris Hatton explains. In research, deep, meaningful involvement of those affected is still missing. It makes no sense that many studies are drawn up, funded, conducted and published without the true involvement of people directly impacted by the issues researchers are examining.

So given this general lack of participation – and to remind us what’s possible – we feature a regional project that involved people making GP services more accessible.

Direct collaboration in this way offers the powers that be the greatest chance of finding out exactly where the gaps are – and how to respond.

For now though, as artist Robin Meader asks through his Community Living cartoon, the Tories ignored the needs of people with learning disabilities – is Labour any better?