The Guardian view on listening to people with learning disabilities: a matter of life and death | Editorial — SkimNews
Get the Health newsletter
Daily health & science — research, biotech, public health, the studies worth knowing. Free.
- Learning Disability England led the new How We Survive and Thrive report with researchers from the University of Birmingham and Manchester Metropolitan University; it documents families being abandoned by planners during Covid while carers and communities provided support.
- England recorded Covid death rates four to six times higher than average for people with learning disabilities; those with the condition die 19.5 years earlier on average, and their deaths are almost twice as likely to be classed as avoidable.
- Fiona Walker, a report commissioner, said, “I know from experience they wouldn’t have valued my life”; the report found that needs of people living in family homes or community settings were often simply overlooked.
- Nice initially advised treating patients needing personal care as highly frail regardless of reason, potentially affecting access to critical care, and later withdrew the advice; pandemic DNACPR decisions were partly linked to it.
- Mencap says reasonable adjustments can be the difference between life and death; treatment reactions are often wrongly read as refusal of care when the real need is clearer information or a carer who can explain and advocate for the patient.
- How We Survive and Thrive recommends prioritizing patients with learning disabilities, increasing rather than decreasing support in future crises, ensuring inclusion on the GP learning disability register, and providing accessible information and reasonable adjustments.
- Learning from Lives and Deaths faces growing funding pressure, as does mandatory healthcare training; alongside cuts to social-care packages and local support, the number of learning-disability nurses has fallen by a third since 2009 and student numbers are collapsing.
Why it matters: For the 1.5 million people with learning disabilities in the UK, the stakes are literal: mortality in England was four to six times higher, and they die 19.5 years earlier on average. The report’s priorities—priority treatment, accessible information, GP-register inclusion and sustained specialist training—target care failures that Mencap says can be the difference between life and death.
Ask SkimNews
