Cancer screening and people with learning disabilities

Guidance to help health professionals, social care staff and family members to help someone with learning disabilities to be screened for cancer.

Supporting women with learning disabilities to access cervical screening

Information to support women with learning disabilities to access cervical screening.

Guidance on cervical screening: ideas for improving access and uptake

Guidance to help primary care, commissioners and local authorities plan and evaluate initiatives around cervical screening coverage in their area.

Patient information: having a colposcopy

Information for patients on having a colposcopy, including why they’ve been invited and what it involves.

Guidance: cervical screening: support for people who feel anxious about attending

Guidance to support people who find it hard to attend cervical screening due to a mental health condition, previous traumatic experience or sexual and/or domestic abuse.

Checklist for patients to use who may need extra support when attending cervical screening

Extra support checklist that patients can complete and take with them to their screening test appointment.

The Havens specialist centres

Information for patients on The Havens, specialist centres in London for people who have been raped or sexually assaulted.

My Body Back project

Service offering cervical screening, contraceptive care, STI testing and maternity care for people who’ve experienced sexual violence.

The Survivors Trust

An umbrella agency for specialist rape and sexual abuse services in the UK.

The Eve Appeal – Cervical screening for survivors of sexual violence

Patient information on cervical screening after sexual violence.

The Eve Appeal – Female Genital Mutilation (FGM): Filling in the Health Messages

A blog post on cervical screening and FGM.

NHS video: cervical screening after sexual assault

This video describes the support available for women who find cervical screening difficult because of previous sexual assault.

Guide: An easy read guide to having a smear test

This leaflet offers a guide to breast screening for people with a learning disability. It explains what cervical cancer is, highlights the risks and benefits of cervical screening, and describes the process of being screened.

The Eve Appeal – easy read guide to cervical screening 

UK national charity providing information on cervical screening for people with a learning disability.

The Eve Appeal – “As someone who has a learning disability, cervical screening was a big thing for me to go and do”

Blog on raising awareness of the barriers that women with learning disabilities face in having cervical screening.

Beyond Words: an easy guide to cervical screening – illustrated version

This booklets can be used by health professionals, family and carers to explain the Cervical Screening Programme to people who cannot read or do not like written words.

NHS England London region has introduced HPV self-sampling (self-screening) to people who are overdue cervical screening.

Self-screening will be offered opportunistically in selected practices.

This follows publication of the Cervical cancer elimination plan for England, which sets out how the NHS will improve equitable uptake and coverage across HPV vaccination and cervical screening to move towards eliminating cervical cancer by 2040.

This service improvement initiative aims to build on what is already working well to drive vaccination and screening uptake and coverage and improve uptake in under-screened individuals.

In phase 1 of this initiative, 20,000 people will be offered cervical self-screening in approximately 100 selected GP practices across London.

Self-screening swabs will be distributed to women and people with a cervix who are never- or under-screened in primary care via an enhanced opportunistic offer which has been informed by the YouScreen trial.

Swabs will be opportunistically offered when individuals attend their GP practice for any reason (e.g. consultation, blood tests, routine health checks). In addition, GP practices will be able to proactively invite individuals to attend the GP practice to complete a self-screening test when they are at least 6 months overdue cervical screening. Swabs will be distributed, collected and tested by Cervical Screening London  (CSL) /Health Services Laboratories  (HSL).

A service evaluation of this first phase of implementation will inform the wider roll-out of opportunistic HPV self-screening in general practice.

HPV Self-Screening for Cervical Screening Clinical Pathway (to be published soon)

This document is intended to outline the end-to-end steps in the HPV self-screening for cervical screening pathway (HPVSS) in London.

NHS London region has developed a number of tools to support participating GP Practices to effectively and safely deliver the opportunistic HPV self-sampling for cervical screening pathway.

Professional Guidance

This professional guidance provides detail on the pathway, testing, results, logistics, sample handling and incident reporting.

• (document to be published soon)

Training

This opportunistic offer can be made by a doctor or nurse. Healthcare professionals do not need to be a registered Cervical Screening Programme sample-taker but must have completed the training for HPV self-screening for cervical screening training.

This training module is available via the e-learning for healthcare (elfh) platform.

• https://learninghub.nhs.uk/catalogue/cervicalselfscreeninglondon

Communication Tools

NHS London, in collaboration with the London Cancer Alliances, have developed a communications toolkit to support GPs to identify, inform and invite eligible clients to perform an HPV self-screen for cervical screening.

• (Communications toolkit to be published soon)

Resources to support patients to complete a HPV self-screen kit

NHSE London, in collaboration with the London Cancer Alliances, have developed a leaflet, and short instructional animation film, to support patients safely and effectively complete an HPV self-screen for cervical screening test.

• Patient instruction leaflet (Click here to access this resource in different languages)
• HPV self screening animation video

These resources have versions available in the following languages:

• English
• Albanian (Tosk)
• Chinese Simplified
• Chinese Traditional
• French European
• Portuguese Iberian
• Portuguese Brazilian
• Spanish Iberian
• Spanish Latin American
• Urdu Naskh
• Shahmukhi (Punjabi)
• Gurmukhi (Punjabi)

What is HPV self-screening?

The HPV self-screening test takes a swab from the vagina to test for human papillomavirus (HPV).

HPV self-screening is a test for cervical screening.

It is offered to women and people with a cervix who rarely attend or who have never attended cervical screening.

You can take your own sample for cervical screening at your GP practice.

Most women and people with a cervix will not have HPV. However, if we find HPV in your sample, you will need to have another sample collected by a doctor or nurse. This is to check for abnormal cervical cells. Abnormal cells can develop into cervical cancer if left untreated.

NHSE London HPV self-screening in general practice

The NHS in London has selected 100 practices to offer HPV self-screening to eligible women and people with a cervix when they attend the practice for any reason e.g. for routine GP appointments, BP checks or blood tests.

In the future, HPV self-screening will be offered by all general practices in London.

Further information about the Cervical Screening Programme can be found here Your guide to NHS cervical screening – GOV.UK

Further information on  HPV self-screening can be found in our patient information leaflet below:

• Patient leaflet information

To ensure that patients receive invitations to cervical screening, they need to be registered with a GP. The following resources will provide guidance and support on this.

Find your local GP

An NHS service that helps to locate GPs based on a UK postcode search.

Registering with a GP: a guide for Gypsy, Traveller and Roma communities (PDF)

Registering with a GP: a guide for people experiencing homlessness (PDF)

Registering with a GP: a guide for asylum seekers and refugees (PDF)

Family doctor service registration form (GMS1)