New mandatory training set to transform outcomes for clients with learning disability

It was great to be back in person attending the National Nursing Conference 2022 in September, which brought together chief nurses from across the UK. As ever, there are always standout sessions that get under your skin and make you want to act when returning to work.

One of these sessions was delivered by Paula McGowan, the mother of a young man called Oliver who died in November 2016. Oliver was an 18-year-old with a mild hemiplegia, focal partial epilepsy, a mild learning disability and high-functioning autism. He was given antipsychotic medication, despite a warning from his family that the medication could be harmful. An independent review found that his death had been ‘avoidable’.

In 2013, the Confidential Inquiry into the Deaths of People with Learning Disabilities (CIPOLD) was tasked with investigating the avoidable or premature deaths of people with learning disabilities through a series of retrospective reviews of deaths. The aim was to review the patterns of care that people received in the period leading up to their deaths, to identify contributory errors or omissions, to illustrate evidence of good practice and to provide improved evidence on avoiding premature death.