Learning disabilities
Historically, people with learning disabilities have been perceived as being incapable of taking responsibility for their lives or even assuming a legitimate role within society. The denial of this responsibility has caused people to have little or no control over their lives, meaning they are often coerced into receiving services that lack adequate planning and consistency and fail to address their concerns or goals in life. This can lead to individuals being devalued, excluded and disempowered, which may be compounded by difficulties in communication that prevent them from expressing their wishes and desires.
Despite this, many front-line staff members caring for people with learning disabilities are neither properly qualified nor adequately trained, leading to institutionalised practices that are unsupportive or even punitive. Clinical Psychology Associates therefore believes it is imperative that staff working in this field are trained in the skills that will enable them to engage with service users effectively, identify and enhance their inherent strengths, and work therapeutically and collaboratively, where possible, to address the barriers that prevent them from attaining an optimal quality of life.
Training for staff in learning disabilities services
We deliver training programmes that are tailored entirely to the relative experience of each organisation’s staff and the levels of impairment of the service users in its care. All our programmes encompass person-centred planning and the latest evidence-based techniques, ranging from applied behaviour analysis for identifying the function of challenging behaviours in people with severe and profound learning disabilities to modified cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) for those with mild to moderate levels of impairment.
The training we provide is designed not only to empower staff teams by equipping them to understand and intervene effectively with challenging behaviours, but also to galvanise them through building a positive team culture. This enables teams to challenge negative attitudes, overcome institutionalised practices, and create a genuinely therapeutic environment that is underpinned by a proper values base, consistency of approach and clear vision of care.
Our training also ensures that the difficulties experienced by service users are addressed in a genuinely empathic and compassionate way and that, as far as possible, their rights, choice, inclusion and independence are promoted. As well as enhancing the knowledge, skills and motivation of staff teams, this training represents a highly cost-effective way of implementing psychological input across an entire service.
Supervision and consultancy
Our training programmes can be augmented with ongoing support and supervision for care staff and, if necessary, direct therapeutic input with individual service users or their teams. We can also provide consultancy that helps services to move beyond simple compliance with frameworks such as Valuing People towards establishing the provision of genuinely ‘gold standard’ care.