Our Transition Action Planning group have been busy this term learning about access to support beyond College. We have welcomed Caroline Gee and Gillian Collins who are part of the enablement service. They spoke to the group about how they support young adults transitioning in to social care or supported internships by helping them develop or fine tune independent living skills such as travel training and home management.
This is a great service for bridging the gap between learnt skills in college and building confidence to apply these in a new context without our background support. It is particularly important when being considered for supported internships.
We have also welcomed Brian Evans into college to discuss the importance of hospital passports.
Brian has visited us previously and its always valuable for both him and us to share our experiences and knowledge. Brian talked us through the passports for Learning Disabilities and Autism, he was able to answer the groups questions about how hospital staff know you have a passport and how passports work across different trusts.
Anyone who has recently undertaken the Oliver McGowan training like us will recognise the health inequalities experienced by those with SEND. The hospital passport seeks to ensure all reasonable adjustments are in place to reduce the likelihood of this happening and increase access to the right care and support at the right time.
Did you know as a young person with a learning disability you should be invited to an annual health check? This should happen from the age of 14 and includes things like screening checks, immunisations etc.
If you haven’t received an invite for a health check recently with your surgery we recommend you contact your GP and ask of you’re on the LD register. Your GP can refer you if for any reason you are not. We recommend you check as previously we have found some of our group are not registered meaning they were not getting invited to important health checks etc.
Residential student? We’ve got you! As a registered resident our residential students get annual health checks with our local GP surgery.
To be able to use the Enablement Service, you need to be referred by your Social Worker or you can contact the customer access centre on 0300 1236701 or for more information you can call 01772 530130 or email enablement.service@lancashire.cog.uk
