Live Blogging from the Sutton Partnership Conference

This post is being made at lunchtime from the Sutton Partnership Annual Conference. Such are the miracles of modern technology.

This years conference is about learning disabilities. This is a big issue in Sutton as Shaun O'Leary in a presentation showed that up to 1100 people with learning disabilities are in the borough, with 150 in hospital settings, 650 in various residential home settings or living independently and 300 at home with parents.

It is noticeable that the statistics presented today show that whilst the majority of people nationally with learning disabilities lived at home with parents or independently, in Sutton it was only 28%,which shows the level of historic institutionalisation that exists in the service in Sutton.

However the longer-term move outside institutions will not be cheap with much higher transport costs required to make a difference to people's quality of life.

The conference is a worthwhile event and I am pleased it was well supported with 176 people registered quite a few who were people with learning disabilities. I was also pleased to see that this year at least 1 Tory Councillor had also registered for this event.