Learning disabilities and ethnicity: achieving cultural competence

Jean O’Hara is a consultant in the psychiatry of learning disabilities for East London and the City Mental Health Trust (130A Sewardstone Road, Bethnal Green, London E2 9HN, UK) and an honorary senior clinical lecturer with Queen Mary and Westfield College, London. Since 1992, she has worked in Tower Hamlets, a deprived inner-city London borough with a large ethnic minority population.

Abstract

Despite the higher prevalence of learning disabilities among some minority ethnic communities and the greater burden of care, families from minority ethnic communities with a member who has learning disabilities are doubly disadvantaged as a result of racial discrimination and culturally inappropriate forms of care and service provision. This paper looks at the issue of discrimination, as well as the generally negative attitudes towards people with learning disabilities, and synthesises these into the concept of ‘double jeopardy’. It concludes by proposing ways of developing cultural competence in the delivery of care to this population.

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