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Background: Children and young people with learning disabilities experience high rates of mental health problems. Methods: The present study reviewed the literature on mental health services for children with learning disabilities, to identify known models of service provision and what has been experienced as effective or challenging in providing good services. Results: Children with learning disabilities and their parents experience barriers accessing mental health services that are related to a lack of information and perceptions of services as being inadequate. Service providers identified a lack of resources as a barrier to meeting needs. Although positive experiences are also observed, many parents have found services to be inappropriate or overwhelming. Conclusion: Research linking population need to available resources, and service models to services users' outcomes would be valuable to make clear recommendations on how mental health services can address the needs of this group more effectively.

Intellectual assessment is central to the process of diagnosing an intellectual disability and the assessment process needs to be valid and reliable. One fundamental aspect of validity is that of measurement invariance, i.e. that the assessment measures the same thing in different populations. There are reasons to believe that measurement invariance of the Wechsler scales may not hold for people with an intellectual disability. Many of the issues which may influence factorial invariance are common to all versions of the scales. The present study, therefore, explored the factorial validity of the WAIS-III as used with people with an intellectual disability. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to assess goodness of fit of the proposed four factor model using 13 and 11 subtests. None of the indices used suggested a good fit for the model, indicating a lack of factorial validity and suggesting a lack of measurement invariance of the assessment with people with an intellectual disability. Several explanations for this and implications for other intellectual assessments were discussed.

Background: The Sheffield Learning Disabilities Outcome Measure (SLDOM) is routinely used across clinical services in the UK, despite not yet showing evidence of psychometric reliability or validity. However, it is reported that the SLDOM demonstrates good face validity, and represents a valuable tool for providing useful information around the parent‐child relationship in the context of having a child with a Learning Disability (LD). Method: This study involved 263 parents or carers of a child with LD who completed the SLDOM. Data from this study were subjected to factor analysis. Results: These findings suggest that the SLDOM could be viewed as a tool that measures two concepts: (1) internal factors central to the parent/carer in relation to having a child with LD and (2) external factors in terms of the context and environment surrounding a child with LD. To our knowledge, this study is one of the first to investigate the psychometric properties of the SLDOM. Conclusions: This has implications in terms of building evidence to support the clinical and research use of this tool; to provide evidence‐based clinical services, and overall, to gain a better understanding of patients and their families, which will allow for optimum service provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accessible summary Many policies and initiatives have been developed to improve mental health services for children with learning disabilities., Children with learning disabilities and their parents, however, experience many barriers accessing mental health services., Service providers identified a lack of resources as a barrier to meeting the needs of children with learning disabilities., Current research offers suggestions on what can be improved, but further research is needed to identify what models of service would work best for children with learning disabilities., Abstract Background: Children and young people with learning disabilities experience high rates of mental health problems. Methods: The present study reviewed the literature on mental health services for children with learning disabilities, to identify known models of service provision and what has been experienced as effective or challenging in providing good services. Results: Children with learning disabilities and their parents experience barriers accessing mental health services that are related to a lack of information and perceptions of services as being inadequate. Service providers identified a lack of resources as a barrier to meeting needs. Although positive experiences are also observed, many parents have found services to be inappropriate or overwhelming. Conclusion: Research linking population need to available resources, and service models to services users' outcomes would be valuable to make clear recommendations on how mental health services can address the needs of this group more effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]