Community Nurse for Children with Learning Disabilities

This post provides a specialist service in Lincoln for children and young people with severe and/or profound learning disabilities and their families. The post holder undertakes home and school visits to assess, plan, and implement programmes of care or strategies for effecting positive change, offering support throughout the process. Emphasis is on behavioural aspects.

This role is an advocate for the child / young person with learning disabilities; promoting their health, competence, choice, rights and quality of life and supporting them through periods of transition / change throughout their development. For professionals from all agencies, this service is an expert resource.

Service Provision:

Individual specialised assessments to ascertain needs, strengths and priorities for care undertaken within the child’s home environment.

Development and implementation and/or co-ordination of holistic individualised packages/programmes of high quality evidenced based care which is able to address all care complexities.

Opportunistic health education for the whole family, incorporating health-promoting strategies within the child’s care plan as appropriate ensuring that the family/carers have a suitable level of information, preparation and training that enables them to care for their child in the community.

Development, implementation and leadership of educational programmes between the hospitals, community and primary care teams and participation in the teaching/preparations of parents/carers and others in the varied aspects of care.

Facilitating groups for children and young people with learning disabilities, and their parents.

Development and delivery, jointly with education colleagues, courses for parents of children with learning disabilities and other conditions such as autism

Provide help with:

• Managing difficult / challenging behaviour
• Promoting social, communication and self-help skills.
• Physical health concerns
• Mental health / feelings / emotions - psychological well being
• Sleep management
• Continence management
• Epilepsy management
• Improving understanding and management of specific conditions.
• Assisting with the monitoring of medications
• Bereavement and loss issues
• Child development / play
• Complex special needs
• Positive parenting / support to parents / carers
• Sexual health education and self protection.
• Promoting independent living skills and social skills
• Health promotion
• General support to children and families through periods of developmental change or particular difficulty
• Transition from child to adult services
• Collaborative work with other agencies as appropriate
• Referral on to other agencies as appropriate
• Ensuring appropriate referral for diagnostic assessment and/or treatment.