To flag or not to flag: Identification of children and young people with learning disabilities in English hospitals.
BACKGROUND
Children and young people with learning disabilities experience poor health outcomes and lengthier hospital admissions than those without learning disabilities. No consistently applied, systematic approach exists across the NHS to identify and record this population. This paper describes practices in English hospitals to identify children and young people with learning disabilities.


METHOD
Interviews: 65 NHS staff. Questionnaire: 2,261 NHS staff. Conducted across 24 NHS hospitals in England.


RESULTS
No standardized approach exists to identify children or young people with a learning disability or for this information to be consistently recorded, communicated to relevant parties within a hospital, Trust or across NHS services. Staff reported a reliance on parents to inform them about their child's needs but concerns about "flagging" patients might be a significant barrier.


DISCUSSION
Without an integrated systematic way across the NHS to identify children with learning disabilities, their individual needs will not be identified.
['Kenten|Charlotte|C|https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7012-7347', 'Wray|Jo|J|https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4769-1211', 'Gibson|Faith|F|https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8125-4584', 'Russell|Jessica|J|', 'Tuffrey-Wijne|Irene|I|https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7288-9529', 'Oulton|Kate|K|https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5778-3849']
D000293:Adolescent D000328:Adult D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel D002648:Child D004739:England D006740:Hospital Administrators D006761:Hospitals D006801:Humans D007859:Learning Disabilities D009313:National Health Programs D036301:Qualitative Research D055815:Young Adult
identification children learning disabilities hospitals UK