Cornwall Health Team Marks Learning Disability Week with Awareness Campaign

Specialist nurses raise awareness across the county during Learning Disability Week

The Trust’s primary care learning disability liaison team hit the road last week, visiting community hospitals across Cornwall to raise awareness as part of Learning Disability Week 2025.

With this year’s theme, “Do you see me?”, the focus was on making sure people with a learning disability are seen, heard and valued.

Meeting frontline staff

The five-strong team, made up of qualified nurses, spent the week engaging with district nurse teams and other healthcare professionals across the county.

They held drop-in sessions to talk through their work and answer questions, while also connecting with other partnerships to improve awareness and understanding.

Samantha Maddern, the Trust’s lead primary care liaison and screening liaison nurse for adults with a learning disability, said the week was about highlighting how healthcare can be more accessible:

“We know that people with a learning disability experience poorer physical and mental health.
We know that poor quality healthcare leads to avoidable deaths in our client group. We talk about things like reasonable adjustments. Really raising that profile.”

Helping people access healthcare

The team works with adults aged 18 and over and supports 53 GP surgeries across Cornwall. Their role includes helping with learning disability annual health checks, validating GP registers, and offering training, advice and guidance to primary care staff.

Samantha explained:

“A big part of our role is to support GP surgeries. To validate their learning disability registers.
That’s really important. It’s moving away from a learning disability diagnosis. It’s based now on need and vulnerabilities.”

“It helps capture some of the most vulnerable people in our society. Without being identified, they may fall through the net. Or they may not be open to services they need.”

80% of annual checks completed

The team is split into two roles: three primary care liaison nurses and two screening liaison nurses.

While the primary care nurses focus on GP support and assessments, the screening nurses help improve access to the five national screening programmes: breast, bowel, diabetic retinal, abdominal aortic aneurysm and cervical.

Samantha said the results this year speak for themselves:

“Annual health checks are key in identifying unmet health needs in our client group.
This year we achieved 80% of learning disability annual health checks. This means 80% of people with a learning disability in Cornwall have received a learning disability annual health check.”

“They also lead to earlier diagnosis. This leads to better treatment outcomes within Cornwall.
The team have worked really hard to do this. We are still striving to achieve better statistics. As well as better quality annual health checks.”

Trust chief executive backs the work

Debbie Richards, Trust CEO and the chief executive lead for learning disabilities in the south west, praised the team’s commitment:

“As the chief executive lead for learning disabilities for the south west region, I am particularly pleased to see the energy and inspiration that our colleagues are bringing to this vital programme.
We know that working together with our most vulnerable residents in their communities can help people overcome barriers and fears, improving access and most importantly their health outcomes.”