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.