A Fair, Supportive Society: Summary Report

This report, commissioned by NHS England, highlights that some of the most vulnerable people in society – those with learning disabilities – will die 15-20 years sooner on average than the general population. Read King's Fund blog here

People with hidden disabilities to benefit from Blue Badges

Blue Badge scheme to be extended to hidden disabilities, including autism and mental health conditions. Click here to go to government news website

Timetable for implementation of the workforce disability equality standard

NHS England has published an indicative timetable for implementation of the workforce disability equality standard (WDES).

The WDES will be mandated via the NHS Standard Contract for 2017-19. The NHS Standard Contract for 2017-19 sets out that NHS trusts and foundation trusts will have to implement the WDES in the first year.

Fewer hospital appointments missed thanks to one simple idea

Going to the hospital for an appointment should be a simple process. But if you have an impairment and services aren’t set up to meet your needs, that’s not always the case.

People who are deaf in Dudley told their local Healthwatch that going for medical appointments was sometimes difficult for them. They talked about their fear of missing appointments because they couldn’t hear their names being called in busy clinics, and their struggles to communicate with staff.

Healthwatch Dudley brought a group of deaf people together to find out more about their experiences and what could be done to make things better. The group shared how the risk of missing appointments was making deaf people feel extremely anxious. It was suggested that they could be given vibrating and flashing pagers to let them know when the doctor was ready to see them. The Trust embraced the idea and pagers have now been introduced to hospital waiting areas across Dudley borough and are being used not only for deaf patients, but also for those with other sensory and physical impairments.

The new disability confident standard

As part of the disability confident campaign the DWP has produced a range of promotional material for employers and stakeholders to use on their internal communications, on their website and share with their customers and networks.

NHS Employers has been working closely with the Department of Work and Pensions and NHS England to encourage trusts to migrate across to the new disability confident standard. Trusts are encouraged to acquire the new disability confident standard as soon as possible as in readiness for the forthcoming Workforce Disability Equality Standard.

Find out more details on the disability confident scheme and download promotional material for your disability confident campaign.

Accessible Information Standard – Overview 2017/2018

This document from NHS England provides an overview of the Accessible Information Standard for patients, service users, carers and parents.

Mechanical clot removal for stroke reduces disability at two years

Timely mechanical removal of the blood clots from inside vessels in the brain after a stroke reduces disability and improves quality of life at two years compared with usual care.

Over a third of those in the thrombectomy group had good functional outcome compared with less than a quarter of the standard care group who received clot busting drugs. This was similar to the results at 90 days and was associated with improved quality of life in terms of self-care and mobility. Findings came from a trial of almost 400 people followed up over two years in the Netherlands.

From the NIHR Dissemination Centre

Mental health: disabled and deaf people

This report makes recommendations to improve access to mental health services for disabled people and deaf people in London. It argues for pan-London communications support for those who are deaf or have learning disabilities and an investigation into the issues around employment, housing, crime and transport to enable disabled people and deaf people to live independent lives.

• Report

Exploring the role of healthcare in the construction of lay experts’ experience of physical disability: a qualitative interview study of dystonia patients in England

Journal of Neural Transmission, December 2016, Volume 123, Issue 12, pp 1505–1527. Abstracts of the Third International Congress on Treatment of Dystonia, 4–7 May 2016, Hannover, Germany

Health scientists have frequently emphasised the importance of exploring patients’ experiences of healthcare for improving services and quality of life (QoL). Such experiences, including individuals’
perceptions of healthcare provision, have been explored in people with dystonia using mainly quantitative measures. Yet, standardised QoL measures have been criticised for neglecting to capture the nuanced ways in which patients living with dystonia draw on their illness experiences to make sense of complex healthcare decisions. Consequently, the aim of this study is to explore how patients utilise their embodied (physical and socio-emotional) experiences to promote, resist, and challenge healthcare practices.

This study reports on group and individual interview data with 42 adults with multiple types of dystonia. Twenty-seven people attended local dystonia support groups and two were patients. In addition, secondary analysis was conducted on twenty-one interviews with thirteen patients, originally recruited for a feasibility study exploring the self-management of dystonia. The data were thematically analysed for recurring patterns and relationships as well as deviant cases.
UHCW Research: Bernstein C.J., Boardman F. and Griffiths F.

Have your say on the Accessible Information Standard review

As the Accessible Information Standard review is launched, NHS England calls on people to share their experiences:

Since 1 August 2016, all organisations that provide NHS care and / or publicly-funded adult social care must follow the Accessible Information Standard in full.

This means that patients, service users and carers should receive information in a format they can access and understand, for example in braille, easy read, audio or via email, and communication support if they need it – for example, a British Sign Language interpreter at appointments.

Now that the deadline for compliance with the Standard has passed, NHS England is undertaking a review of it, to assess the impact and to ensure that it is ‘fit for purpose’.

Reasonable adjustments: the peer support service guide for members affected by disability in the workplace

New document from the Royal College of Nursing for members affected by disability in the workplace.  It aims to provide information about reasonable adjustments that enable members to make changes to their work and working environment so that they can work to the best of their ability.

Burden of Disease Study for England

Estimates by Public Health England of the main causes of death and disability, attributable risk factors and the effect of deprivation, modelled for England and its regions.

Step in time: exploration of synchrony and timing correction in response to virtual reality avatars for gait re-training

The 11th International Conference on Disability, Virtual Reality and Associated Technologies: Proceedings

This study investigates the use of virtual reality avatars as exercise cues for retraining gait. A
feasibility test was conducted by asking participants to step in time with the avatar viewed through
a virtual reality headset. We observed that a temporal perturbation (a speeding up or slowing down
of one step cycle) applied to the avatar resulted in a significant corrective response in participants’
own step timing. If this response can extend to spatial perturbations, we suggest that virtual reality
avatars have the potential to assist in the targeted rehabilitation of neuromuscular or other
disorders and retraining of gait post-surgery.

UHCW Research: I Ahmed and M Rahhal

Workforce Disability Equality Standard (WDES)

The NHS Equality and Diversity Council (EDC) has recommended that a Workforce Disability Equality Standard (WDES) should be mandated via the NHS Standard Contract in England from April 2018, with a preparatory year from 2017-18. NHS England has agreed to do so. The EDC has also agreed to support a programme of work to explain and support it.

View further information about the Workforce Disability Equality Standard (WDES).

Maternity Care Failing Some Disabled Women

Research published by Bournemouth University and commissioned by Birthrights highlights how maternity care may not be meeting the needs of some pregnant disabled women.

A survey of women with physical or sensory impairment or long term health conditions highlighted how – despite most women rating the support they received from maternity health carers positively – only 19% of women thought that reasonable adjustments or accommodations had been made for them. Some found birth rooms, postnatal wards and their maternity notes and scans “completely inaccessible”, while a quarter of women reported that they felt they were treated less favourably because of their disability. Most strikingly, more than half (56%) felt that health care providers did not have appropriate attitudes to disability.