Pre-natally, the Doula was considered helpful and a reliable source of information about pregnancy. Each mother perceived Doula support as a means of keeping her child in her care. Post-natally, mothers described a trusting relationship with their Doula, who enabled them to make informed choices. Doulas described how they adapted their work to meet the needs of parents with intellectual disability. Being involved in Child Protection procedures was perceived as stressful and challenging.

The White Paper 'Valuing People' [Department of Health (DoH) (2001) Valuing people: a new strategy for learning disability for the 21st century, London, HMSO]indicates that people with a learning disability need to become more actively involved in the decisions that affect their lives. This includes being offered active choices in access to health services. Psychologists, therefore, need to think about how to give people with learning disabilities enough relevant information in an accessible way to promote informed consent to treatment. This study investigates how much information adults with mild and moderate learning disabilities understand about psychology services, before and after watching a video designed to explain what seeing a psychologist entails. The video was shown to 19 participants at a local Social Education Centre. Participants' knowledge increased significantly after watching the video. They were able to answer questions about its content better when asked after short sections of the video when presented, rather than after an uninterrupted presentation.

The responses received highlight a small number of areas where relatively simple and low-cost interventions might improve the health and welfare of women seafarers. Specifically these include the production and appropriate distribution of gender-specific information on back pain, mental health and nutrition in addition to gynaecological complaints, to all women seafarers; the introduction of means for disposing of sanitary waste for all female crew on all ships and the improved availability of female specific products e.g. sanitary products in port shops and welfare centres worldwide. Additional work is needed to investigate these areas more fully and to look at the issue of confidence in medically trained staff, medical confidentiality and sexual harassment. Any further work and interventions will require the support of all of the main stakeholders and we plan a briefing meeting to publicise the findings to date and to identify support for further work in this area.

No abstract

Providers in mental health and learning disability services were contacted to request information regarding demographic and other characteristics of service users who were aged over 16 and had been described as having Asperger Syndrome.