Children’s Learning Disability Team

Yes. If a child has been allocated to a member of the team, we can provide advice to the named school. However, we do not accept referrals to offer an intervention to the school solely as this is not our role. The team supports the child/young person and their family/carers in their home environment. We always work closely with education and care settings as part of the work we do and share vital information with each other as part of this process. Working in partnership with education is important to the approach we use, but our role is not to advise schools directly.

Yes. The care that the team offers always begins with support and advice provided by Registered Learning Disability Nurses in a small friendly group setting. This is recommended by NICE guidelines and has the additional benefit of offering peer to peer support to families. Feedback from parent/carers about this positive benefit is very clear. In very exceptional circumstances where need dictates, or where severe risk is identified we can offer a different pathway of support that beings with an individual intervention with a named nurse. There is often a wait for this to happen due to team capacity, whereas group interventions usually begin a few weeks after assessment, so this is a faster route to support. We are happy to discuss any reasonable adjustments you may need to support you in being able to access the group sessions and will meet your needs where possible within the resources we have. We can discuss flexible arrangements for attending. You will be able to contact the team to discuss this at your initial assessment or on receiving an invitation to the groups. We can also provide a letter to support with a request to your employer and to explain that attending the group is akin to attending hospital or other health appointments to support your child.

We can accept referrals to support children with an intellectual / learning disability who have difficulty understanding and managing their emotions.  We are not a mental health team and would look to signposting to a more appropriate service if it was felt, clinically, that the young person requires support for their mental health.

Please take a look at our resources section. Here we share links to the Mencap website and some Easy Read information that may help answer this question. If this is still unclear, please provide as much evidence as possible within any referral to our service, explaining why you feel the child/young person has an intellectual/learning disability (For example, school attended, level of academic ability, skills with activities of daily living, any documents with clear existing diagnosis). You can also phone the team and ask for advice about this prior to referring.

Nurses working in the team do, on occasion, refer children/young people to Psychiatry for consideration of medication if this is deemed appropriate based on identified clinical need. However, before this can be considered the nurse would follow an ethically sound Positive Behaviour Support approach to fully understand the child/young person and their environment, and the nature and functions of any behaviours. The Team’s use of a PBS approach is in line with NICE guidelines around use of prescribed medication for behaviour that challenges for people with learning disability.

Find out more about the NICE guidelines.

No. This is something that our colleagues in the Neurodevelopmental team do and referral to them is via a different route. Please use their website page for further information. Sometimes we work with children and query whether autism or ADHD is present. At that point we would discuss with parents and with colleagues and decide an appropriate and person-centred course of action to move towards assessment.

We cannot say exactly how long you will be waiting but it is now likely to be under a year. We understand this still requires improvement and are working very hard to get waiting list times down using  the resources we have.

The Team are happy to make reasonable adjustments to support parent/carer and children/young people to access the service. Please contact the Team on 01482 692929 (Option 2, option 1) to discuss any reasonable adjustments you may need.

Group intervention sessions are usually held at The Walker Street Centre (Hull) or East Riding Hospital in Beverley (East Riding). These will be a set of 3 consecutive weekday morning sessions from 09.30 to 12.30. Following an assessment where it is agreed that our support is appropriate you would be invited by letter to attend. Group interventions are for parents and child/young person or any siblings are not able to attend.

Initial assessment appointments are usually held at a health centre as close as possible to your postcode and you would be invited to the appointment by letter. Initial assessment appointments are for parent/carers and the child/young person does not need to be present. An initial assessment appointment is around 1.5hrs long. If a parent/carer or child is receiving our second tier of support and has an allocated named nurse any appointments would be arranged between nurse and yourself on a step by step basis and are likely to be at an agreed health centre convenient for yourself.

The Team have a waiting list and time pressures to manage, therefore we highly value timely advance cancellations of arranged appointments or sessions to help us make best use of our resources. To Cancel a session please contact the Neurodevelopmental team on 01482 692929 (Option 2, option 1) and leave a message, giving as much notice as possible. If you are supported by  named nurse they can be contacted individually by phone, SMS or e-mail as arranged at the start of an episode of care.