Interprofessional training—learning disability as a case study

Abstract

This paper describes the background to the joint validation and shared training movement within the field of learning disabilities as it developed during the 1980s. The authors, with other committed colleagues, are concerned to emre that the impact of the movement towards joint validation and interprofessional training does not lessen during policy changes in health and social care in the 1990s. The work of the 1980s sought to shift the attitudes of some professionals and those who are the gatekeepers of these professions, away from organizational frameworks inherited bum more stable times, barneworks which placed undue emphasis on the role of services, with consumer need taking second place. The task of relating the purposes of professional training more closely to the needs of service users and the functions of practitioners continues to be undertaken within the field of learning disability in the context of the new Diploma in Social Work and Project 2000 programmes for the preparation of nurses. In general terms there are similarities between the situation which existed in 1979 and that which exists now. In 1979 the Conservatives were returned to Government and the need to respond to the Jay Report (1979) was pressing. The climate to initiate change existed. The nursing and social work statuary bodies responsible for training and education perceived similarities in their work, encouraged by the Jay Report, and a situation was created for those in learning disability to start to work out the way in which interprofessional training might respond to changing services. The Conservatives have now been re-elected for a further term of office. The professions are far from stable and the need to implement the NHS and Community Care Act 1990 will be high on the agenda as will be the need to examine the possibilities of interprofessional training, albeit in a different context to that of 1979. It could be that the previously marginalized group of workers in disability will have the interprofessional background to encompass areas outside their immediate speciality. We suggest that no other group has tried harder in the past ten years to show how education and training can help create an integrated workforce.

Key Words:

• Interprofessional training
• joint and shared training
• learning disability
• standards and competence