21st Century People

Parents with a learning disability and their children experience significant discrimination and disadvantage. While there is established positive practice in supporting these parents, provision is still poor.

We aim to change this situation in Wales by influencing the development and implementation of relevant legislation, policies and practices that directly or indirectly affect parents with a learning disability.

Find out more about our work with parents with a learning disability.

Our Love Life project is working  to update a training programme on relationships and sexuality led by trainers with a learning disability.

We will be adding more information here as this work develops.

In partnerships with Cerebra we offer workshops for parents and family carers on Cerebra’s toolkit about accessing public services. This practical, problem solving toolkit is full of ways to resolve issues when trying to get the right services for your disabled child. 

Please get in touch if you would like to arrange a workshop for your parents/carers group. Email training@ldw.org.uk 

Wales launched the second Welsh Youth Parliament in January 2022 and Learning Disability Wales is one of the partner organisations supporting 2 young disabled people to have a voice.

Find out more about our work with the Welsh Youth Parliament.

We have many years of experience at Learning Disability Wales at producing accessible information for people with a learning disability and can offer you sessions to learn how to do it yourself.

Our free taster sessions last 45 minutes and can either cover the basics of making information easy to read and understand or look at the values, business and legal case for making your information accessible.

We can also provide online, or when permitted, face to face training sessions.  This course will look at the process and issues involved in making information easy to read and understand including language and document design.

We are working to improve representation of the views and issues relevant to people with a learning disability on Regional Partnership Boards.

This work will start in 2022.

Find out more about our policy work here.

We are the secretariat for the Cross Party Group on Learning Disability, on behalf of the Learning Disability Consortium.

The Cross Party Group is made up of Members of the Senedd from some of the main political parties in Wales and members of the Learning Disability Consortium. The Group aims to discuss and promote the issues that affect the lives of people with a learning disability in Wales and their families/carers.

The Learning Disability Consortium is a group of third sector organisations in Wales that represent the interests of people with learning disabilities and their families/cares: All Wales Forum of Parents and Carers, All Wales People First, Cymorth Cymru, Learning Disability Wales and Mencap Cymru.

Research has shown that, on average, women with a learning disability die 27 years younger than those without a learning disability and men with a learning disability die 22 years earlier than men in the general population.

One of the important ways to change these shocking statistics is for people with a learning disability to have an annual health check to identify any health issues as early as possible and ensure that everyone has equal access to good quality healthcare.

We have worked with Public Health Wales to produce easy read resources on annual health checks and these resources are available on the Improvement Cymru website. The resource pack is designed to be used by all GP surgeries in Wales that offer annual health checks and includes:

• Introduction, useful contacts and list of easy read resources
• Easy read invitation to book an annual health check
• Easy read annual health check appointment letter
• Easy read annual health check pre-appointment checklist
• Easy read health action plan template
• Easy read leaflets about health (scroll down the page to the alphabetical list).

We are continuing to work with our stakeholders to promote annual health checks and the easy read resources in order to increase the number of people with a learning disability who have an annual health check each year.

We also want to ensure that people with a learning disability and their families/carers have access to good quality easy read information about health and wellbeing so that they can keep themselves healthy and identify when they need to seek medical attention.

Many people with a learning disability are lonely and socially isolated. We are working to change this. Connections Cymru is our network for anyone interested in tackling the issues that create loneliness and isolation.

The network:

• Seeks and shares a greater understanding of problems of loneliness and social isolation.
• Shares good practice on reducing loneliness and social isolation.
• Creates links between policy and practice.

You can find out more and join the Connections Cymru network here.

Personalised Technology is any technology that can be used by someone to increase their independence.  There are lots of different types of technology that people use from smart phones and smart speakers to eye gaze trackers to use computers and other special equipment.

We want to promote the ethical use of personalised technology to help achieve independence, choice and control for people with a learning disability.

We run the All Wales Personalised Technology Community of Practice that meets quarterly to promote the use of personalised technology, collaborate and share good practice.

You can find out more about the community of practice and become a member here.

We will be holding events soon exploring inclusive education. 

We will be adding more information here as this work develops.

We will be developing a new toolkit to support young people and families through transition. We will also be holding training sessions about person centred planning in transition.

We will be adding more information here as this work develops.