Learning Disability Service

Service Description

We provide a specialist service for children and young people with learning disabilities. Our Community Learning Disability Service provides assessment, consultation and short, focused treatments and support for children and young people up to the age of 18 who have a learning disability.

We help:

• Pre-school children who are delayed cognitively by at least a third of their chronological age and are also delayed in two other areas such as motor, social or communication/ language skills
• School aged children who have a learning disability and who are delayed by at least three years in cognitive ability and are also delayed in two other areas such as communication and self-help skills.

The team is made up of staff with different specialisms to provide the best possible help and support, including nurses, psychiatrists, psychologists and music and drama therapists. We provide assessment, consultation, intervention, training and liaison which may involve professionals from more than one discipline. Interventions are based on assessment formulation and care planning. Our work is collaborative, goal orientated and, where possible, time limited. 

Consultation and training is aimed at enhancing the confidence and competence necessary to deliver an intervention provided by others involved in the care of young people. Feedback to professionals and families is respectful, open and clear and correspondence is copied to families unless there is good, documented reason not to.

Support criteria

The service accepts referrals for children and young people where:

• Behaviours and/or development needs have a significant impact on the child or young person’s development, quality of life and/or is causing distress to the child, young person, family or carers
• Behaviours of such frequency and intensity cause distress to the individual and/or family/carers and potentially impact upon family resilience
• Behaviours are indicative of established or emerging mental illness
• Behaviours which are clear and persistent are causing functioning to deteriorate and problems to escalate
• Behaviour that is severe and high risk, significant and complex

Requests for support

To access support from this service, a professional must create a request for support. If you are a professional, visit the request support page to find out more information on how to do this.

Social workers from the below teams should make referrals through the social work referral pathway:

• Assessment
• Child in Need
• Child Protection
• Children with Disabilities 

Contact Details

We operate as a Surrey-wide service and our main office is Gatton Place in Redhill. We also have bases in Ramsay House (Epsom), Unither (Chertsey) and Berkeley House (Godalming) but we don’t attach specific geographical locations to the bases as the nurses work flexibly across the county.