Pictured: Emma Sharp, consultant clinical psychologist and clinical lead for psychological services for adults with learning disabilities
Staff from Psychological Services for Adults with Learning Disabilities have received a Big Shout Out for their work in supporting vulnerable patients.
The team care for patients with a learning disability have a lifelong condition that affects their ability, who also have a mental health problem.
Emma Sharp, consultant clinical psychologist and clinical lead for psychological services for adults with learning disabilities, said: “We have a mission statement that we work quite closely to and it’s about providing high quality psychological services to people with learning disabilities.
“Sometimes that’s working individually with people with learning disabilities on kind of coexisting mental health problems, and sometimes it’s working with families or carers about supporting the person with a learning disability that’s open to our service.
“We use evidence based interventions and try to make Lanarkshire a more psychologically informed place.”
The team see patients with a lifelong learning disability.
Emma added: “Sometimes there’s some confusion about a learning difficulty and a learning disability as well. Learning difficulties like dyslexia and dyspraxia wouldn’t be covered within our service.
“People with a learning disability have a lifelong condition that affects their ability to live independently.
“And then for coming to our service, they usually have some kind of concurrent mental health problems as well.
“So it does vary from people who have a very mild learning disability and are living independently in the community to people with very severe and profound disabilities who maybe can’t communicate themselves and need support for all aspects of their daily living.”
Throughout the Covid pandemic, the team worked tirelessly to support their patients in accessing services. Many patients had never used the internet before and had no facility to access it.
Emma said: “Our team have had a lot to deal with over the last four years. COVID really hit our team quite hard.
“People with learning disabilities didn’t always have access to the things that suddenly came into all of our lives, like using digital technologies. We had a lot of people who were shielding, so who were unable to access services in the same way.
“There was people who’d never had wifi in their houses, so we had to apply for funding to get dongles and things like that.
“So what we did well as a team, I think, is we really worked together, we came together through that, there was a lot of ideas shared, there was a lot of enthusiasm for making it work and making sure that our services to people with learning disabilities still continued the best that they could at the time.
“We supported people to apply for iPads through government funding as well.
“We had to simplify all the materials that were being used because the standard guides were not easy read enough for our patients. So we did our own ones with screenshots, people accessing it and things.
“There was a lot of work went into keeping services going the best that we could.”
Speaking of the team’s nomination for the Big Shout Out, Emma said: “It is recognition for all the hard work that the team has put in.
“I think every member of the team put in so much hard work into maintaining and keeping services going. It’s a recognition of that and a recognition of everybody’s hard work.
It’s also a chance to celebrate what we do well, because I think we do connection well and I think we do compassionate practice well.
“Being able to share that more widely is really important to us.”
The Big Shout Out praises NHS Lanarkshire teams for taking an innovative, creative, and patient-centered approach to working, and recognizes the unique contribution staff make to overcoming the challenges faced across the entire healthcare system.
