Children's Learning Disability & Behaviour Support Service - West Cumbria

Support to understand and meet the health needs of children with learning disabilities, global developmental delay and autism

Who we are and what we can provide:

The Children’s Learning Disability Service are a team of experienced learning disability nurses, assistant practitioners and peer supporters. We are able to offer a service when a child or young person requires specialist support arising from their learning disability or autism and its impact on their health. We often do this by working to advise parents or other health professionals working with that child.

Eligibility 

Children aged 2-18 years

• with global development or learning disabilities
• who require specialist support beyond universal and targeted service

Children aged 2-11 years

• who have a diagnosis of autism
• we have a limited offer of services for children who are in the process of assessment for autism

What to expect?

Parents will be offered a programme or workshop as this has been shown to be the most helpful for families.
The aim is to help understand and positively meet the child’s needs

The programmes are:

• NAS EarlyBird (for parents of children pre-school autism)
• What Now? (for parents of school age children with autism)
• Behaviour Support workshops (for parents of children with learning disabilities and / or autism who fit our criteria above)
• Sensory Workshops (for parents of children with learning disabilities and / or autism or going through an autism assessment who fit our criteria above)
• Sleep Workshops (for parents of children with learning disabilities and / or autism, or going through an autism assessment, who fit our criteria above)
• Anxiety Workshops (for parents of children with learning disabilities and / or autism, or going through an autism assessment, who fit our criteria above)
• Empowering Parents (for parents of children with learning disabilities, who fit our criteria above)

For children/young people with a Learning Disability where a parent programme/workshop has been completed, or does not meet identified need, we can provide specialist assessments and interventions:

• Understanding Behaviour
• Sleep
• Continence
• Skills development (e.g. eating, independence skills)
• Access to health provisions / health promotion
• Transitions

For children with autism (without learning disabilities) where complex behavioural difficulties persist after attending appropriate parent programmes we can offer a time limited intervention. This would support the family to develop a behaviour support plan.

In addition we can provide advice and consultation for other health teams on how to adapt their service to make reasonable adjustment for children with learning disabilities or autism