About Learning Disability

According to the World Health Organisation learning disabilities are an ‘arrested or incomplete development of mind’ and someone with a learning disability is also said to have ‘a significant impairment of intellectual functioning’ and ‘significant impairment of social/adaptive functioning’.

This can sound very complicated but in everyday language it means that having a learning disability can affect the way a person receives, remembers and understands information, as well as how they communicate with others. This may make it difficult for a person with a learning disability to succeed at school, develop friendships, get into employment and have a fulfilled life. People with a learning disability are intelligent and do have real abilities. The role of the Valuing Medway People Partnership Board is to help each individual with a learning disability to succeed by organising person centred services which meet all their needs, including health, relationships, leisure, housing, employment and learning.

Learning disability used to be called ‘mental handicap’ or ‘mental retardation’. Some people prefer to say ‘learning difficulty’, rather than ‘disability’. About 60 years ago the National Health Service began to change attitudes and in the UK, institutions in which people lived became hospitals, where people were cared for, rather than just locked away.

We can’t be sure how many people in the UK have a learning disability.  The Department of Health estimates that there may be about 160,000 adults with severe and profound learning disabilities in England, and around 55,000 to 75,000 children with a moderate to severe learning disability. Some people with learning disabilities also have other disadvantages, such as physical disabilities, hearing or sight impairments.

In Britain a very important turning point in the history of learning disability services was the Government’s 1971 report ‘Better services for the Mentally Handicapped’ which drew attention to the very poor conditions in many hospitals. The response to the report led to a nationwide drive for ’Care in the Community’, and the closure and scaling down of hospitals so that people with a learning disability can lead normal lives, or normalisation.

‘Normalisation’ means that everybody is an individual entitled to make choices about how they live their lives. In 1990 the National Health and Community Care Act stated that people who have a disability have the right to extra support services according to their needs, and to be recognised as equal members of our society. Despite all these changes, across the UK people who have a learning disability do still experience discrimination and difficulties in finding employment, housing and getting access to leisure, education and health services.

In Medway, great progress has been made in modernising services but there is still much work to be done in changing attitudes and improving understanding.