Learning Disability Partnership Board

In 2001 the Government published the White Paper "Valuing People" A Strategy for Learning Disability for the 21st Century. This document sign-posted the way that Social Services, Health and other key partners including service users and their families, could work together to provide a better deal for people with learning disabilities and fulfil the social inclusion agenda. A lot of the changes proposed didn't actually require a lot of new money or vast resources to make them happen but rather a different perspective from decision makers and doers- a new lens! 

The Royal Borough is committed to improving the lives of people with learning disabilities as citizens of the Borough. It is a right of all individuals to experience themselves as being fully included in their community and to have equality of access to those amenities in life most people take for granted as a matter of course.

The Learning Disability Partnership Boards have been set up to help achieve this important goal of putting the good practice ideas in "Valuing People" into action and here in the Royal Borough the first Board meeting was held in November 2001.

The Board has met every two months since, in Maidenhead and members include representation from family carers, people with learning disabilities, professionals, voluntary organisations, advocacy services and other key stakeholders. The dates of meetings and minutes are available as a link on this page.

You may like to attend a meeting of the Board and the Board is currently considering having an annual meeting that is open to the public. However if you have an issue you want to raise or a  question to ask, any of the Board members would be happy to speak to you. In the first instance please contact the community team Tel 01628 670117 or email  learning.disability@rbwm.gov.uk


The Board has always been well attended from day one and as one might imagine meetings are a fairly lively affair with some extremely good debates on how, if things are to change for the better, this can be done. Board members do not always agree which is a sign of a healthy group of stakeholders! However they do listen, ask questions of each other and reach conclusions in most cases!


Valuing People sets the national agenda of objectives for improvement in the lives of people with learning disabilities in the UK. The Windsor and Maidenhead Learning Disability Partnership Board and sub group structure has the job of carrying out this work of translating the Valuing People strategy locally. The Boards job is to look for local ways of putting the values and actions into place.
It has always been important that this is our strategy in our local Borough of Windsor, Maidenhead and Ascot. It is important that it is done with the people who count most i.e. people with a learning disability and their family carers. It is and has to be a partnership for change. We will not always agree which is to be expected in any healthy community. Change cannot even guarantee to bring a better outcome for the individual, nothing in life can for any of us. It is a risk sometimes but Valuing People sets out a challenge to seek for these improvements in individual's lives and encourages us to act on it.


To help us do this we have created a number of smaller sub-groups to look at particular aspects of Valuing People and to find ways of making improvements in the lives of individual people based on the four key principles of Valuing People: Rights, Independence, Choice and Inclusion.


Sub Groups are working on improvements in the following areas:

• Person Centred Planning and Transition planning
• Day opportunities
• Healthy Living
• Employment
• Learning Disabled from Minority Ehtnic Communities
• Services for Carers

Various local strategies required by the national Valuing People agenda for change, have been completed. These strategies inform the work plan of the Partnership Board and they are available on this website or by contacting the community team direct on Tel 01628 796718.

The strategies are around:

• Person Centred Planning
• Quality Assurance
• Workforce and Training Housing
  Employment

Learning Disability Joint Commissioning Strategy

The Strategy was completed last year and is our first. It brings together the last two years of consultation and joint working with the Partnership Board and other community partners. It sets down the overall direction, based on a three year plan, for the services required now and in the future. It is based on poeple's needs and the investment required to meet those needs . It brings all the previous strategies together in a process that identifies what needs to be done and through a set of service changes and improvements, to improve outcomes for people with a learning disability living in the Borough.

The Joint Commissioning Strategy and the previous Valuing People strategies and frameworks, underpin the work of the Board. The end result of these strategies and frameworks is geared toward improving the lives of individual people with a learning disability.

One of the suggestions in Valuing People was that we should get much better at creating plans in and for a persons life that have the person at the centre of the plan. This is where person centred planning comes in. You can find more about Person Centred Planning on the web page Person Centred Planning Sub Group.

Getting this improvement in an individual's life requires a partnership of all those involved . Plans need to be made and put into action by those individuals already in a persons life who care about them and who want to see that individual have maximum opportunity to access those things in life that are ordinarily available for all

What's Next?

The challenge is to deliver the vision set out in the White Paper so that the lives of hundreds of people with learning disabilities in the Royal Borough will be noticeably better and more fulfilling. The Partnership Board together with the support of it's community partners is determined to continue to meet this challenge.