A review of the current evidence on the effectiveness of learning disability training programmes for NHS Trust staff

Making sure health professionals have the training they need to support people with learning disabilities is a project commissioned by the South Regional Health Education England Intellectual Disabilities programme. The aim was to find and share best practice in training mainstream health professionals.

As part of this project we have conducted a review of published and unpublished literature to summarise the existing evidence base about the most effective and sustainable approaches in relation to training for NHS Trust staff.

Despite some of the limitations in the existing evidence base, from the studies reviewed, we have made some recommendations regarding the delivery of effective learning disability training in a health setting. We have also identified some research gaps.

We have written three reports about what we found:

1. A main report discussing the findings of the studies reviewed. This contains full details of the search strategy and the references of the articles found and cited, along with an evidence grid summarising the articles reviewed.
2. An easy-read summary.
3. A summary of our literature review report.

This literature review was used to inform the next stages of our project, which included a Delphi Survey and the topic guides for interviews with hospital staff.