This page is aimed at healthcare professionals. On this page you can find information on:
Learning Disability overview
Eligibility and referral criteria
Make a referral
Information about our teams
Useful links and resources
Learning Disability Service overview
We offer a range of services to assess and support people with learning disabilities. We offer crisis support from our Learning Disability Intensive Support Team.
A person with a learning disability may experience:
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A significantly reduced ability to understand new or complex information and learn new skills
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A reduced ability to cope independently
This starts before adulthood and has a lasting impact on development.
Eligibility and referral criteria for adults with learning disabilities
We are a specialist service commissioned to work with adults aged 18+. We also work with people aged 17 and above to prepare to transition into adult services.
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Our community teams accept referrals for people aged from 17 years and six months
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Our psychiatry and outpatient service accept referrals for people aged 18 years and above
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Our forensic support team accept referrals for people aged from 17 years and above.
The person needs to have a diagnosed or suspected learning disability as well as a health need. The World Health Organisation defines health as mental physical and social wellbeing.
We work with people who cannot have their needs met by mainstream services with reasonable adjustments alone due to their learning disability.
Mainstream services have a duty to provide services to everyone regardless of their disability through the provision of reasonable adjustments. We work with people with a learning disability only if reasonable adjustments have been attempted and have not worked, or are not sufficient to meet people’s needs.Where do our services operate? - MAY NEED TO CHANGE
The Adult Neurodevelopmental Service provides an Integrated Service across all of Derbyshire Including Derby City.
This is provided jointly by Derbyshire Community Health Services NHS Foundation Trust and Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust.
We have bases across Derbyshire but we also work with people in their homes and communities.
Make a referral
Information about our teams
The Community Learning Disability Nursing team supports adults with a diagnosed learning disability who have specialist health needs that cannot be met by mainstream services, with reasonable adjustments. The team delivers time-limited, episode-based interventions in collaboration with families, carers, care providers, mainstream health services, and local authority partners. The team provides specialist support in areas such as physical and mental health, behaviour support, trauma and emotional distress, sexual health and relationships, dementia screening, and proactive health promotion. A key focus of the team is reducing health inequalities, enabling equal access to mainstream services, and empowering families, carers, and providers with the knowledge and skills to better support individuals with a learning disability. The team strives to improve quality of life and promote independence.
Occupational therapy considers the impact of someone’s learning disability on their function, highlighting how the learning disability affects their life and engagement in occupations that are important to them. (Lillywhite, Haines 2009). The role is holistic and person-centred, evaluating the persons strengths, needs and barriers to occupations and activities related to health and wellbeing outcomes.
The Occupational Therapist addresses the impact of physical, cognitive, perceptual, sensory, and behavioural factors in the assessment and intervention of individuals. This includes the environmental and social factors which affect their skills
Specialised areas of physiotherapy may include the management of complex needs through tailored and adaptive approaches. This can encompass 24-hour postural care, falls prevention and intervention, and the management of mobility challenges, all designed to support individuals with diverse and evolving physical needs.
The learning disability speech and language team supports adults with learning disabilities by assessing and treating communication difficulties and issues associated with eating, drinking, and swallowing (dysphagia).
Enhanced Case Managers are responsible for the monitoring and facilitation of out of area specialist rehabilitation beds for Derbyshire residents with complex mental health and learning disability care needs. This also includes liaising with our Case manager colleagues from IMPACT whom oversee the low secure beds These placements are predominantly hospital based and non-NHS healthcare provider lead. There is an aim where possible to return service users closer to their area of origin.
The team are responsible for the management of a defined caseload of individual fully funded continuing care cases, arranging or commissioning the provision of services appropriate to meet the assessed needs of the individual and arranging periodic reviews according to local protocols. We work exclusively with service users, their carers and their advocates, according to the requirements of the National Framework for Continuing Health and Social Care, in the assessment of individual needs and the provision of appropriate services/resources.
The Neurodevelopmental Patient Assurance Team (NDPAT) consists of Admin, Commissioning Managers, and Deputy & Area Service Manager.
The role of ND PAT is to support the commissioning of key services as well as holding local processes that are vital to reduce the number of autistic people and people with a learning disability in mental health inpatient settings and develop community alternatives.
Some of the processes our team facilitate are running the Dynamic Support Register (DSR), Care (Education) Treatment Reviews (C(e)TR), Local Area Emergency Protocol (LAEP), and Safe Effective Legal Affordable (SEAL).
We support both adults and children & young people with a confirmed neurodevelopmental diagnosis.
The latest versions of referral forms can be found on the JUCD website - Joined Up Care Derbyshire Integrated Care System
We are happy to talk through any of our processes, or if you are unsure whether to notify us of an individual we are happy to talk it through.
Please feel free to contact ND PAT on;
About the Strategic health facilitation (SHF) team
We work with Health workers like Doctors, Nurses, and Managers. We help them to understand about the special needs of people with learning disabilities.
One of the roles of the SHF team is to support primary care to deliver good quality annual health checks for people with learning disabilities. We do this by providing training sessions to primary care staff. The sessions include Learning disability awareness, reasonable adjustments, advice on the Annual Health Check template, invitation process and payments.
The SHF team will, at individual practice request, review their learning disability register to check that the right people are being invited and help to explore possible reasons for nonattendance.
We also work with carers, families and people who have learning disabilities. The SHF provide a range of awareness raising or training sessions to them to help them to keep people with learning disabilities healthy.
For more information, please contact the team at
Transition - Moving from child to adult services - work in progress
Link to Transition Leaflet
Growing up and the Mental Capacity Act:
What does Transition and Preparing for Adulthood Mean?
Transition FAQS
Support for Carers
Carers in Derbyshire - Derbyshire County Council
Support for carers - Derby City Council
Online Safety
Keeping children safe online | NSPCC
Useful links and resources
- Annual Health Check Page
- Annual health check :: Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
- Report the death of someone with a learning disability or an autistic person
- Health and social care - Derby City Council
- Social care and health - Derbyshire County Council
- Learning Disability - Down syndrome - Williams syndrome | Mencap
