Good Afternoon All
I hope this message finds you all well.
Since the Health Education England working across Kent, Surrey and Sussex Intellectual disabilities workforce event hosted by Skill for Care in December 2015 we have moved forwards a long way with many of the concerns you all raised.
One of the first steps we took was an offer from HEE KSS during December 2015 to support you all with any learning disability training related initiative that you might have planned for 2016 (further details can be found at: https://goo.gl/D3Xx09 ).
We are keen to develop a forum that will allow you all not only the opportunity to, share your amazing practices with likeminded groups across Kent, Surrey and Sussex. But will also allow HEE KSS to imbed an annual provider meeting to continue to move forward the development of the intellectual disability workforce.
You may or may not be aware of the Kent and Medway Learning Disability Community of Practice (K&MLDCoP, see attached summary of key events to date). The K&MLDCoP is three years old this year and during the last six months has been reviewing its goals and aspirations.
It’s model up to this point has been to enable and encourage local membership to contribute to activities based around the three main purposes, those of:-
- Eradicate health inequalities for people with learning disabilities
- To promote person centred care and support
- To encourage equality and access.
This has led to three well attended and evaluated conferences, engagement via social media and IT, and a growing number of clinical and academic projects (details can be found at: https://goo.gl/hU369K ).
As a result of a review over the last few months, the K&MLDCoP has been considering ways of building on its firm foundations, which has led to a successful bid for resources from HEE KSS to allow them to open up this resource to a wider community.
With this in mind the K&MLDCoP will become the Kent, Surrey and Sussex learning disability Community of Practice over the next six months which will culminate in a 2016 launch Conference.
The CoP are looking for volunteers from across Kent, Surrey and Sussex to get involved in the Conference planning and the continued development of the CoP.
Outline for the conference:
- A free one day event open to anyone with an interest or working in Learning Disability
- The day will be made up of a number of short workshops/ presentation provided by community members to showcase the work they are currently doing in field of Learning disability across KSS. This will be videoed and shared via social media (click here to see the 2015 conference details: https://goo.gl/uF0pDp )
- During the conference the CoP will also host the first meeting of ID Workforce stakeholder group, the information shared at this meeting will guide the future ID workforce development plan for HEE KSS, and is crucial to our work as we move it forward.
We would like as many of you as possible to either attend this event, or put forward someone else in your organisation who can, in order that we can continue to help you make a positive difference. If you would like to know more or would like to be involved in this exciting new start for the CoP, please contact them at kandmldcop@gmail.com
Please feel free to forward this information to any other groups or individuals in your area you think would like to be part of this exciting development.
I look forward to hearing from you soon
Best regards
George Matuska
Lead Nurse – Learning Disabilities
Clinical Advisor Intellectual Disabilities – HEE in Kent, Surrey & Sussex
Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust
Email: george.matuska@nhs.net
Twitter: @georgematuska
Workforce Development for & with People with Intellectual Disabilities 