Clearing the barriers

People with learning disabilities still often have difficulties accessing primary healthcare services, but, as two examples from Yorkshire show, there are ways to overcome this. For adults with autism in Sheffield, accessing diagnostic support from the city’s Asperger’s Syndrome Service used to be difficult at best, but thanks in part to the efforts of a lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University, this has become a lot easier. John Kay, who has Asperger’s syndrome, helped secure £500,000 worth of funding to allow adults in Sheffield to have access to diagnostic support for autistic spectrum conditions. Previously, the ‘out-of-area’ referral policy followed by