Learning Disability

Dorothy House Hospice Care has been committed to improving access to end of life care services for people with a learning disability for a number of years.

A learning disability can be described as ‘a reduced ability to understand new or complex information, to learn new skills (impaired intelligence) and to cope independently (impaired social functioning), which began before adulthood and which has a lasting effect on development’.

A number of different terms can be used to describe learning disability including ‘learning difficulty’ and ‘intellectual disability’. However, these terms commonly indicate a variety of disorders that affect acquiring, retaining, understanding, organisation or use of verbal and/or non-verbal information

Contacts

British Institute of Learning Disabilities (bild)	Campion House Green Street Kidderminster Worcestershire DY10 1JL 01562 723 010	BILD home
Learning Disability Web Site	e-mail: [email protected]	Learning Disability home
Mencap	Helpline: 0808 808 1111	Mencap home
NHS National End of Life Care Programme	3rd Floor St John's House East Street Leicester LE1 6NB Tel 0116 222 5103	End of life care document

Helen Sanderson Associates have produced an accessible workbook to help people, including those with learning disabilities, record what is important now, and what they want in the future (planning for the end of life). Click on this link to download the workbook (in pdf format): Living well .

Review date: October 2011

Dorothy House Hospice Care provides the A-Z as a service to patients, carers and professionals, and cannot accept responsibility for the content of any external site referred to. We endeavour to ensure that all links are relevant at the time of publication.