Why are we stuck in hospital?

Published by the University of Birmingham, College of Social Sciences, this guide was created to help overcome the barriers to people with learning disabilities and/or autistic people leaving ‘long-stay’ hospital.

This guide is based on the experiences of 27 people with learning disabilities and/or autistic people living in 3 long-stay hospitals in England – as well as on the experiences and perspectives of their families, hospital staff, commissioners, social workers, advocates and social care providers who support people coming out of hospital.

This guide offer 10 top tips for help people leave hospital:

1. Our lives our on hold – do your jobs and get some ‘oomph’
2. Set the person behind the labels
3. Done make me jump through more hoops than is really needed
4. Make the criminal justice system is on board
5. Help hospital staff know what’s available in the community
6. Don’t put us into boxes or ‘scatter-gun’
7. Give me a change to try life outside
8. Please help me with trauma I’ve experienced
9. Don’t let us fall through the cracks
10. Don’t set us up to fail  

The underlying research was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Health and Social Care Delivery Research programme (HSDR).