Within This Issue
The theme for this issue is community partnerships. There has been a push for some years to encourage local authorities and local health services to work together to commission and deliver integrated services. In part, ministers and their advisers are concerned about the future cost of services for people with disabilities but there is also recognition of a need for ‘smarter working’ and ‘joined up thinking’. Children’s services and services for adults with learning disabilities continue re-organise themselves at local level to deliver new outcome-focussed services and this remains a frustrating time of uncertainty for many who are looking for a coherent pattern to emerge. Regrettably, there is too much ‘re-inventing the wheel’ across the nation and not enough sharing of experiences. So it helps that this issue contributes several very different examples of developing partnerships: community participation in learning disability nurse education; transition planning in special schools; the therapeutic and educational value of hydrotherapy; appropriate forms of formative assessment; the impact of the use of TacPac with one young man over six years; the IncIusive Libraries Research Project; and finally Alice Bradley’s article which reminds us of the poorly-endowed world beyond these islands and what can be achieved by community partnerships.
