Learning Disability Service (Adults)
The Learning Disability Service is made up of several teams, providing a range of care and support services for people with a learning disability.
Contents
Overview
The Learning Disability Service is made up of several teams.
These teams provide a range of care and support services for people with a learning disability.
The Community Team
The Community Team is made up of:
- Community nurses
- Occupational therapists
- Speech and language therapists
- Physiotherapist
- Support staff
The Community Teams provide:
- specialist person centred assessments support and care to people with complex health care needs
- specialist advice and support to people with complex health care needs, their family, carers and other professionals.
Assertive Outreach Team
The Assertive Outreach Team is made up of health care assistants.
They can provide support to those who are vulnerable to breakdown.
The Assertive Outreach Team has core hours of 7:15am to 8:45pm, Monday to Sunday.
The teams are a planned care service where most individual's appointments are pre-arranged with the patient or family / carers.
There may be instances when a Community worker can respond to an urgent request for a visit however most work is planned in advance.
The teams work with a local partnership model including statutory (for example, Local Authority Services and Social Workers) and non-statutory (for example, Your Voice Counts).
Acute Liaison Service
The Acute Liaison Service provides a range of support to promote specialist learning disability care to patients (over the age of 18) in an acute care setting.
It will make sure that people with a learning disability have fair access to treatment on admission to hospital.
The nurse will provide advice and support to the patient, carer and other professionals.
The servive has core hours of 8:30am to 5pm, five days a week throughout the whole year, excluding bank holidays.
The admin team supports our clinicians, as the service's single point of contact.
Support available
Therapeutic intervention is based upon individual needs and is not time limited, however all intervention is planned for the minimum number of sessions and reviewed, should there be a need to extend the length of input this will be based on individual need with regular reviewing built into the process.
Cases are worked as a full multi-disciplinary team and have regular monitoring and management of interventions.
Individuals with SEND can access the service for support with transitions from the age of 17 years 6 months.
All individuals accessing the service have support and care specific to their needs and ability.
The service works with children's services closely to support transition to adult services.
Who can access the service
To access the service, you need to be:
- over 18 years of age (work can begin with individuals in transition from 17 ½ years)
- registered with a South Tyneside GP.
- diagnosed with a learning disability (unless referral is for screening)
How to access the service
Referrals can be made:
- Over the phone to our single point of contact admin team or can be made in person to any member of the team.
- Written referrals are accepted but must include the reason for referral and consent of the individual - Please contact stsft.ld-admin-team@nhs.net for the most current referral form.
Referrals are reviewed and initial contact made within 10 working days.
Urgent Referrals are allocated same day and contact offered by duty professional.