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Calls to action
IHC is calling on the following actions to significantly improve a health system failing some of the most vulnerable in Aotearoa New Zealand:
- Full government-funded comprehensive annual health checks for all intellectually disabled people – health checks with a focus on preventive health care like the ones in the United Kingdom and certain states in the USA and Australia.
- Targeted preventative screening programmes for intellectually disabled people.
- Mandatory curriculum and ongoing professional development for healthcare professionals including mental health professionals. Subjects could include improving communication, understanding ableism and subconscious bias and human rights.
- Improve the health literary and advocacy skills of intellectually disabled people their families and whanau:
a. Health information in plain language, Easy Read and video format
b. Promotion of health literacy and advocacy skills
c. Better use of health passports
d. Introduction of a national electronic healthcare record
e. Provision of balanced evidence-based information about intellectual disability; particularly to parents - Consideration of adopting twin track approach to all models of care across the lifespan. Twin track approach is where all health services would have a good understanding of intellectual disability and are able to provide services to intellectually disabled people but there are also specialist services available. This includes funding accredited specialist intellectual disability healthcare positions and teams, including the development of specialist intellectual disability nurses.
- Strategies to ensure that the transitions between paediatric to adult to geriatric health services work better for intellectually disabled people.
- The implementation of a national work plan aimed at stopping the over medication of intellectually disabled people with psychotropic medicines modelled on the NHS STOMP programme.
- Funding for carers and other people close to the intellectually disabled person to be part of the care team in a hospital setting.
- Requirement for public health organisations to develop policies to improve the health of intellectually disabled people.
- Establishing disability liaison officers with first-hand experience of intellectual disability in hospitals. Australia has already established Down Syndrome Health Ambassadors who engage with the Down syndrome community.
- That intellectually disabled people are identified as a priority population in health, with monitoring of their health outcomes:
a. Implementing an intellectual disability marker in health records so government can collect, analyse, and release disaggregated data about intellectually disabled people and their health outcomes
b. Implementing a quantitative health wellbeing framework (that includes oral health) that measures the wellbeing of intellectually disabled people
c. The implementation of a mortality review service improvement programme about the deaths of intellectually disabled people (such as the United Kingdom’s LeDeR)
