Website of the Department of Health

Introduction

The Health and Social Care Act 2001 says we must give Parliament a report on learning disability once a year.

In this report we talk about things that Government Departments have been doing or plan to do. Each chapter is about something we said in Valuing People that we wanted to do and what has happened across Government to try and make change happen. There is a list of all the different Departments we have spoken to at the front of this report and what they do.

The Learning Disability Task Force report for this year is called 'Rights, independence, choice and inclusion'.  It was published on 26th February.  The report said there are still things the Government needs to do. In this report we have used the Learning  Disability Task Force sign to show when we are replying to what they said.

Government Departments know about the concerns of people from black and ethnic minority backgrounds with learning disabilities and the worries that these people are not being included.

The Department of Health and Valuing People Support Team asked Association for Real Change (ARC) to develop advice for Learning Disability Partnership Boards. This is to help all Learning Disability Partnership Boards to make support services better for people with learning disabilities from ethnic minority communities.

The 'ethnicity framework' was launched in February by Stephen Ladyman, Health Minister, in a series of six conferences across England.

The National Forum of People with Learning Disabilities and other people have told us how important it is that things should be written in an accessible way.

Over the past year many Government Departments have been trying to make sure that the work they do is accessible. They have worked with people with learning disabilities to make easy read documents, and some examples are talked about in the report.

There is only one, accessible, report this year. We have tried to write this report in a clear way so that as many people as possible can understand what it says. People with learning disabilities have helped to make sure that the words in this report are as clear as possible and that the pictures help people to understand what the words mean. We would like to thank them for their help and hope that this will make it easier for everyone to understand what is said in this report. You can also get this report on tape and CD ROM.

The report uses the word "we" a lot. When it says "we" that means the Government.

• Download Valuing People: Moving Forward Together - Full Report With Pictures (This is a large document. It may take some time to download) (PDF, 2010K)
• Download Valuing People: Moving Forward Together - Without Pictures (PDF, 868K)
• The Government's Annual Report on Learning Disability 2005