People with profound intellectual disabilities rarely experience a physically active lifestyle, and their long‐term physical inactivity likely contributes to poor health. The authors developed and implemented a pilot exercise program for persons with a profound intellectual disability and conducted a study to evaluate the effort. The development of mobility, independent movement, and posture profiles resulted in a 16‐week needs‐led exercise program based on “rebound therapy,” with additional exercises, including active and passive exercise, walking, swimming, hydrotherapy, and team games. Study participants undertook 3–5 additional periods of low‐impact exercise per week, providing moderate to low levels of activity judged in terms of energy costs. The program was evaluated using physiological measures (resting pulse, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, weight, height, body mass index, seizure activity, activity levels), counts of challenging behaviors, and by indices of quality of life and alertness outcomes. Participation in the exercise program was associated with decreases of frequency of challenging behaviors and increases in quality of life (freedom scores) and alertness. The authors concluded that barriers to the development and implementation of ongoing exercise programs in continuing care settings can be overcome by trained and motivated care staff.

Accessible summary• People with Down syndrome have their own health needs which may be different from those of the general population. • We wanted to know if we could pick up these health needs by inviting people to a regular clinic • We found that by coming to the clinic to have their health checked, some people found out about a health need that they might not have known about otherwise. SummaryPeople with Down syndrome have a greater risk of developing a range of health problems, including cardiac problems, thyroid disorders, sensory impairments, reduced muscle tone (hypotonia) and Alzheimer's disease. Despite this increased risk, regular screening is not typically offered to individuals with Down syndrome. A multidisciplinary health screening clinic was set up by a Community Learning Disability Team in Fife to offer regular health screening to people with Down syndrome. The format of the clinic, outcomes after 18 months and future service developments are discussed.

The aim of this study was to evaluate whether involvement in a 16 week exercise programme improved goal attainment in areas of behaviour, access to community-based experiences, health and physical competence. Participants were women with severe intellectual disability and associated challenging behaviour (setting A,N = 14) and male/female service users with profound physical and intellectual disabilities (setting B,N = 8). The exercise programme included active and passive exercise, walking, swimming, hydrotherapy, team games and rebound therapy. Significant gains in aggregated goal attainment were demonstrated by week 16. The reliability and validity of our goal attainment procedures were demonstrated with inter-rater reliabilities exceeding 80 percent. Changes in goal attainment were concurrent with global clinical impression scores in a series of single case studies. Continuing care settings should dedicate care staff to provide routinized, continuing exercise programmes.