Community nurses for children with a learning disability
We’re a small team of qualified nurses and individuals who’ve had extensive training and experience of working with people with learning disabilities. We work with families and agencies in various settings to improve health outcomes for children and young people.
What we do
We help each child to meet their optimum physical, emotional and intellectual potential.
We work with you and your child/young person’s behaviour, toileting, sleep and health promotion. Our team can you give you advice and support if your child/young person has recently been diagnosed with a a learning disability.
We’ll write an individual care plan with strategies to help you address their needs.
We also:
- consult with other professionals to help enhance your child/young person’s overall experience of our services
- give your family information and advice, or sign post you to other resources and services
- support your child/young people and your family through transition into adult services.
Our team works with children and young people in their own homes, schools and respite units according to their needs.
How to get a referral
You’ll need a referral from any healthcare professional or social worker or teacher who knows your child.
Your child must be:
- aged 0 to 19 years and formally diagnosed as having a learning disability
- registered with a GP in Buckinghamshire.
Our health visitors will assess and manage continence needs until your child’s 5 years old.
We can work with children/young people who live in residential settings, for no more than 38 weeks per year.
CNCLD referral form for healthcare professionals, social workers or teachers to complete .
What happens next
If the referral meets the criteria, we’ll send you and the referrer a letter until we allocate a nurse to your child.
We’ll complete continence product assessment within 4 weeks. We allocate other referrals in date order that we get them.
Once allocated, someone from our team will visit your family regularly for up to 6 months. We’ll discharge your child when:
- we’ve met their health need
- your child no longer has health needs
- you’ve missed 2 consecutive appointments.
- or if your child needs longer to work with the programme we created.
How we support children and young people
Children with a learning disability may display behaviour that poses a challenge to others and can put the safety of them and others at risk.
Challenging behaviours include:
- aggression (hitting)
- self-injury (head banging)
- destruction (throwing things)
- pica behaviour (eating inedible objects)
- sexually inappropriate behaviour, such as undressing or masturbating in public areas
- other behaviours (sitting down and refusing to move).
How we can help
Challenging behaviour can be very distressing and have a significant impact for your child, your family and your child’s carers.
We offer an initial assessment to help us understand what’s happening. We’ll then see you at home or in a parent consultation.
We provide up-to-date, evidence-based advice and strategies to help your child and your family. We begin working with your family by using our starter pack which helps us better understand your circumstances.
Starter pack
This includes ABC charts and assessments.
See our information resource on Positive thinking about managing challenging behaviour in children.
Useful links
Support for vulnerable children and young people
Many children and families have issues with toileting. If a child has a learning disability and/or physical disability, it does not mean that they can not develop in toilet training.
Nearly all children can learn to be clean and dry. They have the right to support and opportunities to develop their continence skills to full potential.
It’s important to promote a healthy bladder and bowels whichever level of continence a child can achieve. Untreated constipation can lead to discomfort, pain, sore skin and bladder problems/infection. All children need to drink plenty of fluids to avoid constipation.
How we can help
We provide advice at home and in school for children aged 5 or above.
Before your child reaches 5 years of age, our health visiting team will provide advice on toileting.
We complete an assessment with your family and explore strategies that may help stop toileting issues. We can also provide continence products if your child meets the Buckinghamshire Healthcare Continence policy. We also work hard to improve services for children with continence needs in health and education settings.
We begin working with your family by using our starter pack which helps us better understand your circumstances.
Starter pack
This includes baseline fluid and elimination charts and assessments.
See our information resource on Positive thinking about continence promotion for children and young people.
Useful links
Support for families of children with bladder and bowel problems
Help your child to stop bedwetting
Getting enough sleep is essential for our physical, emotional and mental well-being. Sleep deprivation can affect our attention, concentration, memory, behaviour, makes us feel anxious, irritable, overactive, aggressive and depressed.
Looking after a child who has a sleep problem can be exhausting and have a significant impact on them and the whole family. We provide the tools to help everyone get a better night’s sleep.
Once we’ve completed your child’s initial assessment, we’ll arrange to visit you, or invite you to attend parent consultations. We can also offer support over the phone or sometimes via email or by post.
All our nurses have completed sleep practitioner training and can provide useful advice and resources.
We begin working with your family by using our starter pack which helps us better understand your circumstances.
Useful links for further advice
Positive thinking about sleep management in children
Tools and tips on how to sleep better from the Sleep Council
Sleep advice and resources from Cerebra
It’s vital to involve you and your child’s carers if we want children and young people to embrace a healthy lifestyle. We can provide you with food diaries for your child and talk to you about making small changes to your child’s diet. We can also refer your to our Nutrition and Dietetics team.
Community dietitians look at health promotion, clinical work or a mixture of both. They promote healthy food choices to prevent disease by increasing awareness of the link between nutrition and health.
We can visit schools and carry out health promotion with children targeting specific projects such as healthy eating, self-care and hygiene. We can also provide healthy lifestyle packs.
Useful link
We visit schools and work with children and young people on topics such as puberty, growing up, sexual health and stranger danger. We also work with other organisations to provide help and advice to enhance independence skills and keep young people safe in the community.
Flu can be an unpleasant illness often lasting a few days.
Children who have complex health needs may need to stay in hospital for management and treatment of severe symptoms.
Children mostly have the flu vaccination as a nasal spray.
Find out more about your child’s vaccinations
Find out more about your child's flu vaccine [PDF, 603KB] and what to expect. You may find it helpful to download and show this to your child.
Our sexual health clinic teams screen and treat patients with sexually transmitted infections including HIV. They also provide contraception care and advice and run specialist clinics for HIV care, coil and implant fitting and complex genital problems.
Find out more about our sexual health clinics
Contact
01296 838000 (option 8)