Twelve Years On: The Long‐term Outcomes and Costs of Deinstitutionalisation and Community Care for People with Learning Disabilities

Abstract

This paper reports on the key findings of a study into the outcomes and costs of community care for a large cohort of people with learning disabilities, supported in 12 study sites across England, who left various long‐stay hospital 12 years ago as part of a centrally monitored and evaluated government policy initiative on deinstitutionalisation. It represents the last follow‐up of a raft of linked longitudinal evaluations, conducted at four time points over a twelve‐year period. The paper identifies the findings from the last follow‐up and interprets and presents them as summary observations and trends in relation to the findings in learning disability, briefly reviewing them in relation to wider evidence on deinstitutionalisation and community care in England.

From solitude to solicitation: How people with intellectual disability or autism spectrum disorder use the internet

“…For people with intellectual or developmental disabilities, these relationships are often limited to other people with similar disabilities, family members and members of their paid support staff (Cambridge et al, 2002;Clement & Bigby, 2009;Forrester-Jones et al, 2006). In Sweden, parents and teachers in special programs for young adults with ID (18-20 years old) describe their students as socially isolated.…”

Twelve years on: Service use and costs for people with mental health problems who left psychiatric hospital

“…Further analysis found these two factors to be closely associated (Cambridge et al, 2002). The adjusted R 2 for this equation is 17%.…”

“…We also assumed that costs would be associated with the type and scale of the user's accommodation and the agency that managed it. Finally, we included the user's gender as a potential predictor of costs (Cambridge et al, 2002). Linear regression equations (backward elimination) were fitted using these multiple client-specific data as independent variables and total weekly costs per person at Time 3 as the dependent variable.…”

“…Cluster analysis was used to reduce the dimensions in outcome data and where data were missing on individual items that comprise the sub-scores (such as the total skills and abilities or symptoms and behaviour scores) the average of the answered parts was used (Cambridge et al, 2002). This approach has the potential to bias the results where, for example, some high-scoring groups may not have answered parts that other groups answered fully.…”

Fulfilling the promise of better lives

“…How else to interpret the finding, for example, that after an initial spurt of development after leaving institutional care for a life in the community, people with learning disabilities made, on average, no further gains over 12 years living in community services (Cambridge et al, 2001)? How else to interpret the finding, for example, that after an initial spurt of development after leaving institutional care for a life in the community, people with learning disabilities made, on average, no further gains over 12 years living in community services (Cambridge et al, 2001)?…”