Learning Disabilities

Learning Disabilities is an accessible introductory textbook that will help to improve the quality of care provided to people with learning disabilities. It is aimed primarily at nursing and healthcare students who are not in the learning disabilities field of practice but are seeking to understand learning disability and become rounded practitioners.
Through clear explanations, examples and activities, the book will help you to recognise, support and care for people with learning disabilities whenever you meet them in your practice. You will learn:

• What learning disability is and how it interacts with physical and mental health
• What the role of the nurse or carer is and how to care for and provide support to people with learning disabilities
• About legal issues around learning disability including discrimination, capacity and consent
• How to support people with a learning disability who are experiencing ageing and suffering bereavement
• About spirituality and sexuality in relation to people with a learning disability
• How to support the informal unpaid caregivers who provide daily care to a person with a learning disability, and how to recognise and utilise their experience and knowledge. Written by a highly experienced author, academic and caregiver, this book will help you to improve your understanding of learning disability and to provide the high quality care to which people with learning disabilities are entitled.

Auteur

Chris Barber is a registered nurse (learning disabilities), qualifying as such in December 1989, and he holds an MEd from the University of Birmingham in special educational needs (autism). He has worked as a nurse, as a visiting lecturer in learning disability nursing at Birmingham City University, and for the eleven years up to 2021 as a full-time care-giver for his late wife. Chris is a parent of a young man who is on the autism spectrum, and he himself was diagnosed at the end of 2008 as being 'high-functioning autistic'. Chris sits on the editorial boards of the British Journal of Nursing, the British Journal of Mental Health Nursing, and the British Journal of Health Care Assistants and has written a number of articles and papers on a wide variety of subjects including learning disabilities, care givers, spirituality and autism. He is the author of Autism and Asperger's Conditions, published by Quay Books in 2011.