>>Aaron: My name is Aaron Oxford and I am a Learning Disability Network Manager at NHS
England. Our team has an advisory group.
This is a group of people with a learning disability, autism or both, and family carers.
They are all people who have good connections with other groups and people.
This means they can help speak up for others as well as themselves.
The advisory group helps tell NHS England about the experiences and opinions of people
who have a learning disability, autism or both.
In July we had a meeting with the NHS England Advisory group and one of the things we talked
about was annual health checks. Annual health checks are for people who have
a learning disability that are aged 14 or over. Annual health checks happen once a year.
We asked the advisory group for their feedback about how annual health checks can be improved.
They said that more people need to be told that they can have an annual health check.
NHS England is promoting Mencap’s Don’t Miss out campaign to improve people’s knowledge
of annual health checks. They said annual health checks should be promoted
in the places that people with a learning disability often go, such as self-advocacy
groups, day centres and at doctors surgeries. The information should be available in easy
read. GP’s should have a learning disability register,
so they know to invite people for an annual heath check.
We should tell people why it is a good idea that they have an annual health check. Because
some people don’t want to be on a list. Health checks help people find out about illnesses
earlier. The advisory group said we need to increase
the number of GP’s doing annual health checks and that the quality of annual health checks
that happen need to be better. At the moment annual health checks don’t
always happen every year.
The advisory group recommended that GPs are shown videos and case studies about what a
good annual health check is. They should be told about the ways annual health checks help
find health problems earlier and help say how to keep people well.
People with a learning disability should also be told what a good annual health check is,
so that they can complain if their annual health check isn’t good enough.
People with a learning disability should quality check annual health checks. This is happening
in some places but it should happen everywhere. Annual health checks should be done by someone
who knows about learning disability. The advisory group also said that it would
be really helpful if people with autism also had annual health checks.
This is because often people with autism don’t visit their doctor because they find it tricky
to know if they are unwell.
Thank you for watching this video. We hope that you use this information to encourage
other people to have their annual health checks! If you would like to know more then please
click on the link below this video which will take you to our newsletter where there is
an article about annual health checks.