Patients with learning disabilities or autism

The hospital liaison team

The team is available from 8.30am to 4.30pm, Monday to Friday. If you, your child or someone you care for has a learning disability and/ or autism please contact the team to discuss coming in to hospital and how we can help using the contact details below.

The team phone number is 07464 923263 or 023 8120 5367. The team email address is lda@uhs.nhs.uk 

The team can help you:

• transition from children's to adult services
• arrange reasonable adjustments to make coming to hospital easier for you and your family/carers
• get useful information about your treatment in hospital.

Hospital passport

This is an invaluable tool and allows you to share lots of information about yourself or the person you care for including how you communicate and express yourselves, likes and dislikes and how to support if distressed. This can also help give healthcare staff a baseline of how you are when you are well.

We will endeavour to identify reasonable adjustments that may help to support you whilst in hospital. These can be easy read or accessible information, longer appointment times, or allowing carers or a family member to stay with the patient during their stay, for example.

This might include:

• minimising waiting times
• allowing for longer appointment times
• adjusting the environment, for example removing unnecessary clinical equipment or reducing interruptions
• asking the patient's family, friends or carers about the best way to communicate with the patient - this might involve signs and symbols or touch as well as speech
• working with the patient's family, friends or carers, as they know the patient best
• giving information in easy read formats.

The video below, produced by Mencap, gives you information about asking for reasonable adjustments, which all people with a learning disability are entitled to.

Southampton community learning disability health team

Call 023 8231 0300

Resources you might find helpful when you come into hospital

The Hospital Communication Book

This book is about communicating.

The first part is about how staff at the hospital can change how they communicate so everyone can understand, but you might find it interesting and helpful too.

The second part has lots of pictures of things you might need to talk about while you're in hospital. You could use it at an appointment to tell the doctor how you're feeling, or your medical team might use it when they're explaining what treatment you'll need.

Good health care for all

This leaflet tells you about the help you can ask for when you need to go to the doctor or to hospital.