Care for people with a learning disability during the pandemic

This month’s insight report focuses on care for people with a learning disability. In it, we discuss our forthcoming provider collaboration review (PCR) on people with a learning disability living in the community, which looks at how services have worked together to meet people’s needs. The full PCR report will be published in July and looks at services in seven local areas in England.

We have previously highlighted our concerns in relation to the care of people with a learning disability as well as autistic people. The COVID-19 pandemic has served to shine a light on some of these pre-existing challenges, gaps and poor-quality care. As part of our PCR, we have explored these issues for learning disability services, and the impact of the pandemic on people who use services, providers and stakeholders.

This insight report also provides more information on our year-long programme of work to improve the regulation of services for people with a learning disability and autistic people including three areas of focus:

• Registering the right services – allowing people to use services that support them in the way they want to live and where.
• Supporting providers to improve – ensuring people are not moved to a service that isn’t safe and expecting them to live in a service that doesn’t meet their needs.
• Influencing the improvement of care pathways and ensuring that people are receiving the right care at the right time – accessing local services that meet people’s needs and ensuring they get the right healthcare when needed.

Finally, this insight report updates on data on deaths in care homes and of people detained under the Mental Health Act.