Learning disabilities and autism support

Here you will find the most important information you need when you come to one of our hospitals.

There are videos for you to watch, which give you more information about your hospital visit as well as other information that you can download and print off.

To help us to help you, please download and fill in these forms:

• Hospital Passport - Editable[pdf] 3MB
• Health action plan [pdf]

Please bring these with you when you visit us.

We treat lots of patients every year as inpatients and outpatients.

Inpatients stay in our wards and we have over 1500 beds for them.

Outpatients come and see our doctors or nurses for short appointments in clinics, then they go home. If you are coming to our hospital as an outpatient, you will have a letter from us.

If you need to call the hospital, please call the number for the hospital you want below, and a receptionist will help to direct your where you want to go:

• Basildon - 01268 524900
• Mid Essex (Broomfield, Braintree, and St. Peter’s) - 01245 362000
• Southend - 01702 435555.

If you want to speak to a specialist nurse for a learning disability or autism please use the contact details in the next section.

If you need to speak to a specialist nurse for a learning disability or autism, please contact the hospital that you live closest to:

• Basildon Hospital - call 01268 524900 and press 8064
• Southend Hospital - call 01702 435555 and press 6448
• Broomfield Hospital - call 01245 362000 and press 4741.

However, if you prefer to email for learning disability or autism support, please email their joint email address at mse.learningdisabilities@nhs.net or mse.autism@nhs.net.

Frontline website/app - Frontline is a community project. It helps frontline workers and the public to quickly find details on local health and wellbeing services and to contact services through callback and referral options. Visit https://uk.frontline.com to find out more.

EasyHealth website - the easyhealth website has lots of health information that is easy to understand. Visit https://www.easyhealth.org.uk for more information.

Unhappy about your care - if you are unhappy with anything that happened during your visit to the hospital, we want you to tell us - we want to hear your views. Click Giving feedback or making a complaint about your health care to find out about making a complaint.

Useful videos

Consent -  giving your consent

Accident and Emergency (A&E) -  coming to the A&E department

Visiting -  about your visit to hospital

Sepsis -  watch this video to find out some important information about sepsis or download our Sepsis easy read leaflet [pdf].

MRI - Common worries of an MRI explained (youtube.com) to find out about what happens during an MRI to easy any worries you may have.

Our reasonable adjustments cards are credit card sized plastic cards featuring a patient’s name and date of birth, along with their picture.  Most importantly however, the card has details of key reasonable adjustments that we can make to support our patients' experiences of our hospitals to be more positive.

On presenting the reasonable adjustments card to staff, patients can be assured that staff will understand what they are asking for, and staff can confidently try and arrange these adjustments for patients, wherever possible.  For outpatients appointments, adjustments are more likely to be accommodated if arranged in advance.

Reasonable adjustments can include:

• Double appointment (needs notification in advance)                                   
• Quiet waiting area (quieter corridor, side room etc)
• First/last appointment of the day (needs notification in advance)
• Escort(s) (family/carer/staff)
• Speak to me/my carer (include the patient in discussion and give them information, unless requested otherwise)                                          
• Distraction aids (Buzzy Bee etc – available from the learning disability and autism team) 
• Moving and handling support (wheelchair, hoist etc)
• To be seen as soon as possible (needs notification in advance)
• Communication support (Easy Read, pictures, objects of reference, time etc) 

Reasonable adjustment cards can be requested by completing the application form below.

If you have any questions you can contact our team at mse.learningdisabilities@nhs.net or mse.autism@nhs.net.

For information about Covid-19, you can download:

• Covid-19 learning disability hospital summary [pdf]
• Covid 19 easy read vaccination leaflet [pdf].

You can find out more about our latest visiting guidance, here https://www.mse.nhs.uk/coronavirus-covid-19.