A full-day conference has taken place in central London to allow staff to learn more about the work of various sites and services across East London, Bedfordshire & Luton.
The day was hosted by Dr Sanjay Nelson, who is the Trust’s Clinical Director for Learning Disability and a Consultant Psychiatrist, and Ruth Cooper, the Operational and Strategic Lead for Learning Disability.
Sanjay and Ruth kicked off the event to welcome attendees, and outlined the importance of supporting services to provide quality care for users with learning difficulties or autism.
This led to updates from Simon Hardcastle-Waugh, Associate Director, Quality and Safeguarding at Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes Integrated Care System (BLMK ICB) and Pauline Goffin, the Director of Mental Health, Learning Disabilities and Autism at North East London (NEL) ICB. Both spoke in depth about the significance of partnerships across both areas to develop effective healthcare plans.
Our Interim Chief Executive, Lorraine Sunduza, provided the event’s keynote speech, where she thanked everyone for their hard work and dedication to supporting those in need.
Before the mid-morning refreshments break, the room heard topline summaries from Newham, Bedfordshire & Luton, Tower Hamlets, Hackney, Forensics, as well as from the team lead for Learning Network and Strategy.
A discussion about autism, gender and identify from Dr Catriona Stewart OBE and an update from Simon Bedeau of the People Participation team took us into the lunch and networking break.
Various workshops took place in the afternoon, ranging from genetic testing, stopping over medication of people with a learning disability, autism or both (STOMP) and forensic risk assessments, to sustainability and quality improvement.
The afternoon ended with a session about sex and relationship support for autistic people, led by Dr Claire Bates, who is a Research Associate at the University of Kent and Manchester Metropolitan University.
The Trust’s Chair, Eileen Taylor, closed the conference by reaffirming words used by Lorraine in the morning, and thanked the large array of guest speakers and attendees for making the day a large success.