Hft is a national charity that supports people with learning difficulties. They have deployed two forms of technology to help them provide improved support for their clients. Lincus provides easy to use tablet interfaces that enable people with limited language capability to communicate their needs and it can also capture a wide range of information about people with learning difficulties which can be used to manage the support they are given. Linus has been deployed with the Health Equalities Framework (HEF) which provides a series of scales enabling an assessment to be made of the degree to which people with learning difficulties are able to access support and services. The institute evaluated progress in the adoption of Lincus with the HEF in two Hft locations. The evaluation demonstrated there was considerable benefit for some people with learning difficulties in using Lincus to communicate their needs and that the use of the HEF highlighted inequalities of provision that led to local remedial action. The broader aim of using Lincus as a major management tool were to some extent hampered by difficulties in capturing all the necessary information.

VIDEO-CONFERENCING SERVICES FOR PEOPLE WITH LEARNING DISABILITIES

People with learning disabilities often have problems sustaining contact with their families and accessing health and other services when they need them. This project provided video-conferencing facilities that people with learning disabilities and their carers could use to ease these communication problems. The technology was deployed across five locations in England and the Institute played an action research and evaluation role to support the project in its search for the best way to exploit this technology for the benefit of people with learning disabilities. Early results suggest a major benefit is that the technology can be a significant benefit to families in maintaining contact with people with learning disabilities but that organisational issues in revising service procedures may hamper adoption of the technology within the health services. The project worked in an iterative way to support the learning of all parties about the value of this technology and how to overcome the organisational problems in its adoption.