Improving the Health and Wellbeing of People with Learning Disabilities: An Evidence-Based Guide for Clinical Commissioning Groups has been published on the Improving Health and Lives website

The guide has been written to help CCGs:

• commission high quality, cost effective general and specialist health services for people with learning disabilities;
• jointly commission services for people who challenge services and those with complex needs; and
• work with health and wellbeing boards, local authorities and others to address the social factors which affect the health of people with learning disabilities.

There is already a wealth of good practice guidance and information on people with learning disabilities available. The guide aims to bring this information together in one place and signpost CCGs to it using web-links and references to good practice. The guide also includes recommendations from other reports where appropriate, and makes links to the national outcomes frameworks.

The guide has been published with a presentation summarising key points. Both documents are also available in easy read format.

The guide was written by the Royal College of GPs and the Improving Health and Lives Learning Disability Public Health Observatory with support from the Joint Commissioning Panel for Mental Health and the Royal College of Psychiatrists. It was commissioned by the Department of Health.

Early drafts of the guide were shared with the three emerging CCGs who are working with Improving Health and Lives, and they were asked use their experience to comment on it. Their comments on the document were invaluable and had a considerable impact on its final presentation.

The three emerging CCGs are:

• Cambridgeshire and Peterborough (contact Dr Caroline Lea Cox  clc@doctors.org.uk)
• Nene (contact Dr Tom Howseman  tomandcollette@btinternet.com )
• Gloucestershire (contact Dr Martin Gibbs martin.gibbs@glos.nhs.uk or Kevin Elliott kevin.elliott@glos.nhs.uk )

In addition to working on the guidance, the CCGs have been sharing learning and resources at national meetings. They are also involved in some work on developing a tool to measure the outcomes of specialist learning disability services, based on the reduction of the determinants of health inequalities. The tool will be published in the new year.