Putting the long into long term

Nice way to start off the first full week of the new year – the NHS published its long term plan today.

Depending on what you read or watch, it’s either unworkable or it could save half a million lives.

As for what it offers people with learning disabilities and/or autism – areas which the NHS proudly announced a while ago would be clinical priorities – it’s all a bit meh.

Today’s big reveal puts the long into long term.

The plan repeats longstanding aims to get autistic and learning disabled people out of long term hospital care and into proper communities – it promises a new target of 50% reduction in inpatient care by 2023/24. That’ll be 13 years since the Winterbourne View scandal where inpatients with learning disabilities were abused by care staff.

In the meantime, 2,350 people are currently languishing in hospital-style assessment and treatment units like Winterbourne View. This is just another long-term target to add to those that have already been and gone..

There’s another long term target too – for every million adults, only up to 30 people with a learning disability or autism will be in inpatient units (the equivalent number for children and young people is 12-15).

But why these numbers? Is 30 per million what equality looks like?

Then there’s a very clunky bit that’s made my head hurt:

“Since 2015, the number of people in inpatient care has reduced by almost a fifth and around 635 people who had been in hospital for over five years were supported to move to the community. However the welcome focus on doing so has also led to greater identification of individuals receiving inpatient care with a learning disability and/or autism diagnosis, so increasing the baseline against which reductions are tracked.”

This seems to be blaming the slow progress on moving people out of hospitals on the fact the NHS has realised that there are more people living in these places in the first place.

People and families really deserve more.

This, languishing at the foot of the NHS Long Term Plan website, says it all:

“We are working with people with lived experience of learning disabilities, autism or both to produce a version of the NHS Long Term Plan in easy read. This will be available soon.”

So people with learning disabilities or autism are a clinical priority but you can’t actually be arsed to produce an accessible, easy read or audio version of the plan that is meant to prove this.

Classy.

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