Nurses who work with people with learning disabilities have “real concerns” about the safety of their clients because of cuts in services, according to a new study.

A poll of 500 nurses revealed that three out of four saw spending cuts to services in their area in the past year. The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said its survey also discovered cuts in the range of services offered, such as health education and personal care packages.

Almost 1.5 million people in the UK have a learning disability and the figure is set to increase in the coming years, said the RCN, which has also warned of cuts among other areas of nursing, including the prospect of 60,000 job losses across the NHS.

RCN general secretary Dr Peter Carter said: “The NHS has a duty to treat everyone as equals and provide the care we all require. However, when it comes to people with learning disabilities, today’s survey clearly shows that this is just not happening.

“With increasing caseloads and complexity of care, alongside decreasing staffing levels, it is hardly surprising that nurses are voicing concerns about the safety and welfare of their patients. Our worry now is that in this tough economic climate, the NHS could end up forgetting people with learning disabilities.

“The expert continuing care provided by these specialist nurses greatly improves the quality of life for people with learning disabilities and their families. However, over the past 15 years we have seen real underinvestment in learning disability care and this trend must be reversed as a matter of urgency.”

The survey results were published at the RCN’s annual conference in Harrogate, where nurses heckled Health Secretary Andrew Lansley over staffing numbers in the NHS.

Dan Scorer, senior campaigns and policy manager at learning disability charity Mencap, said: “Mencap campaigned heavily for the appointment of learning disability nurses, and where these are in post they have made a positive difference to the quality of health care and experiences of people with a learning disability and their carers.

“However, overall improvements in the NHS for people with a learning disability have been slow, and in some cases non-existent. Therefore it is deeply worrying to see that any progress that has been made may be undone by cuts to services.

“The Westminster Government needs to stand by its commitment to improve care for people with a disability and protect the frontline services they rely on. If it fails to do so, we fear that the result may be further avoidable deaths of people with a learning disability.”

MONDAY, May 14 (HealthDay News) — Young adults with an autism
spectrum disorder are less likely to continue their education or get a job
after high school when compared to young adults with other disabilities,
new research indicates.

According to the study, only about 35 percent of young adults with
autism attended college and only 55 percent had a job during the first six
years after high school. Overall, they faced a greater than 50 percent
chance of being unemployed or not attending college when compared to those
with other disabilities, the researchers reported.

More than half of autistic young adults had no participation in either
work or education during the two years after leaving high school, and even
six years later more than one-third were without work or higher education,
the study found.

“Many families with children with autism describe leaving high school
as falling off a cliff because of the lack of services for adults with an
autism spectrum disorder,” said senior study author Paul Shattuck, an
assistant professor of social work at Washington University in St. Louis.
“So much of media attention focuses on children. It’s important for people
to realize autism does not disappear in adolescence. The majority of
lifespan is spent in adulthood.”

Part of the reason that young adults struggle after high school is that
a core feature of the disorder is difficulty knowing how to interpret
social interactions and handle a wide variety of social situations,
something that is a necessity in many jobs, experts say.

But researchers also note that more educational and job-related support
could help people with autism — including the wave of children recently
diagnosed — who will be aging over the next decade as they find their
place in society.

“We need to find ways to make room for adults with autism in our
communities and help them get connected to opportunities that people with
other forms of disabilities are participating in,” Shattuck said.

The study is published online May 14 and in the June print issue of
Pediatrics.

In it, researchers examined data from the National Longitudinal
Transition Study 2, a nine-year study of adolescents who were enrolled in
special education because of autism, learning disabilities, intellectual
disabilities or speech and language impairments.

Compared with youth in the three other disability categories, autistic
teens and young adults had significantly lower rates of employment and the
highest overall rates of no participation in any work or education.

For example, only 55 percent of young adults with autism had paid
employment, while 86 percent of those with a speech or language
impairment, 94 percent of those with a learning disability and 69 percent
of those with mental retardation did.

The education picture was a little brighter. About 35 percent of kids
with autism attended a two- or four-year college; 51 percent of those with
a speech or language delay did so, while 40 percent of those with a
learning disability and 18 percent of those with mental retardation
did.

For lower-income autistic teens and young adults, participation rates
were even lower.

An estimated one in 88 U.S. children has an autism spectrum disorder,
according to the latest figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention. About 50,000 youths with autism will turn 18 this year in
the United States.

Peter Bell, executive vice president of programs and services for
Autism Speaks and the father of a young adult with autism, said the
transition to adulthood can be particularly difficult for the families of
children with autism. During childhood, most services are centered in the
educational system and children are entitled to receive a public
education. In many states, special needs teens can continue to get some
services through the schools until around age 20 or 21.

After that, parents have to seek help from the social services system,
which is more fragmented and difficult to navigate. And yet, he added, the
report is not all bleak.

“I was pleasantly surprised that about 35 percent went on after leaving
high school to attend some form of college,” Bell said. “I was told 16
years ago when my son was diagnosed that there was very little chance he
would ever go to college. So the fact that over one-third of the autism
population goes on to some form of education after school should say to a
lot of parents, ‘You shouldn’t automatically assume your child is not
going to go to college’.”

His own 19-year-old son isn’t attending college, but he does work at
several jobs in their town, where he is a well-known and accepted part of
the community, Bell added.

More information

Autism Speaks has a toolkit to help teens with autism and their families
make the transition out of high school.