This publication provides the most timely statistics available relating to NHS funded, learning disabilities and autism (LDA) services in England. These statistics are derived from submissions made using version 4.1 of the Mental Health Services Dataset (MHSDS) for April 2020 data onwards. The MHSDS was introduced on the 1 January 2016 and superseded the following standards:
- ISB 0011 Mental Health and Learning Disabilities Dataset (MHLDDS)
- ISB 1072 Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) Dataset
- ISB 1509 Mental Health Care Cluster
- ISB 1078 Mental Health Clustering Tool
The changes incorporate requirements in support of Children and Young People's Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (CYP IAPT), elements of the Learning Disabilities Census (LDC) and elements of the Assuring Transformation (AT) Information Standard. Information provided in this release therefore covers, learning disabilities and autism services for all ages. Learning disabilities and autism services have been included in MHSDS (and its previous guises) since September 2014.
From May 2018, these LDA specific reports and data files will no longer be included as part of the main MHSDS publication and will be reported separately here. The MHSDS LDA series is now published alongside the LDA information from the Assuring Transformation series so that all LDA data is presented in one place, making the comparisons between the two datasets easier.
High level statistics on mental health services will continue to be published in the main MHSDS publication series for users requiring statistics for this group of services as a whole. It is published on the NHS Digital website here: https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/mental-health-services-monthly-statistics
All elements of this publication, other previous editions of this publication series, and related annual publication series’ can be found on the NHS Digital website at: https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/data-collections-and-data-sets/data-sets/mental-health-services-data-set/statistics-about-mental-health-learning-disabilities-and-autism-services
These measures are currently experimental statistics and will be released as such, until the characteristics of data flowed using the current data standard are fully understood.
Information is presented by hospital spells and ward stays in this report. A hospital spell is a continuous period of inpatient care under a single Hospital Provider starting with a hospital admission and ending with a discharge from hospital. A ward stay is within a hospital spell so one hospital spell could include more than one ward stay for a patient if they have moved wards.
The counts of hospital spells are therefore different to the count of ward stays and would expect the count of ward stays to be greater. However, submissions have to include hospital spell information but not necessarily ward stay information. Where the number of ward stays are less than hospital spells, this indicates that information about the ward where patients were receiving care was not provided for everyone in hospital. Despite the limitations of the ward stay information, it is still used in the report as it provides more detailed information than hospital spells about the episode of care.
The use of restrictive interventions in inpatient learning disabilities and autism services was first published in January 2019 publication which reported on October 2018 data. These figures are subject to a number of data quality issues (see Data Quality Section for further information). Therefore, these figures should be interpreted with caution.