We have a team of mental health and learning disability nurses. They have several years of working with neurodivergent individuals and families. Our nurses are able to work across many areas, depending on areas of interest and specialism they have chosen to pursue in their career. Below is a summary of some of the things the nursing team can help with.
Our nurses are trained in health coaching and are able to support you to develop more independence and control over your own health.
They are able to complete holistic assessment of your health needs based on the ecology of health model. This supports screening for diagnostic overshadowing and to identify any unmet needs.
This can be particularly useful when informing the E’H’CP section of a plan for young people.
Our team are highly skilled in assessing individuals’ mental health and supporting any associated risks.
When individuals are experiencing poor mental health, it can be difficult to self intitate strategies that are new. We take a proactive approach to our support, exploring strategies that can help at times of poor mental health or embedding these before crisis.
The team have experience of working with individuals that are looking to be discharged back into the community and/ or avoid admission to hospital. They can support activation of national frameworks such as the CT(E)R process and support person centred planning and risk management.
Therapies such as CBT, and DBT has shown to be effective for autistic individuals. However, these are only effective if there is an understanding of emotions in the first place.
The team supports the development of emotional literacy and understanding your own body. Emotions can be intense, both positive and negative emotions, and can be difficult to tolerate.
Our emotional regulation programme is a blended approach of Professor Tony Attwood emotional toolbox and the Zones of Regulations.
Our nurses can support you in understanding relationships. There are many stages to developing a relationship and the team can support you at every step, for example exploring what type of relationship you would like, to how to maintain a relationship and manage conflict within these.
We also think it is important to develop our understanding of what is a ‘healthy relationship’ to reduce the risk of domestic violence and exploitation.
Referral processes can be confusing, as well as their being several barriers in place to access health care.
The team can provide system navigation as well as advise on reasonable adjustments you require under the Equality Act. We have good relationship with Oxford Health Reasonable Adjustment Service and Oxford University Hospitals, Liaison Nurses, to support with any planned contact with their services.
Based on Spoon Theory, our nurses can support you to pace and prioritise your energy levels to avoid burnout, meltdown and shutdowns occurring.
A tool that is typically used with learning disability nursing, health action planning is a great approach for all to ensure that their health needs are well managed in a proactive manner.