Allied Health Professions (AHPs)

Podiatrists are experts in all aspects of the foot and lower limb. Working across all health and care settings, their primary aim is to manage people’s health, mobility, and independence. Podiatrists support people with learning disabilities with foot complications, often resulting from structural, joint, gait, or conditions that can result in reduced or restricted mobility.

Occupational therapists work with children and adults who have a learning disability and/or who are on the autism spectrum to help them take part in the daily activities (occupations) that are important to them at home, at school, at work, and in the community. Occupational therapists enhance people’s independence and life opportunities by developing their skills and adapting activities or the environment to better suit an individual’s needs.

Speech and language therapists help people of all ages with speech, language and communication problems. They can also help people with dysphagia (eating, drinking, and swallowing difficulties). These issues can be caused by or related to learning disabilities and/or autism.

Dieticians work with individuals, care/support teams, families, and groups to enable people to manage their nutrition and food-related issues to improve their health. Dieticians assess, diagnose, and treat dietary and nutritional problems, using advanced communication and behaviour change skills to enable people to make appropriate lifestyle and food choices.

Dieticians working with people with learning disabilities and autism support a varied range of dietetic needs, including nutritional support, enteral feeding, and weight management.

Physiotherapy is a science-based profession and takes a ‘whole person’ approach to health and wellbeing, which includes the patient’s general lifestyle.

At the core is the patient’s involvement in their own care, through education, awareness, empowerment and participation in their treatment.

You can benefit from physiotherapy at any time in your life. Physiotherapy helps with back pain or sudden injury, falls management and prevention, mobility, rehabilitation after surgery, managing long-term medical condition such as asthma, cerebral palsy, dementia, etc

Physiotherapists help people of all ages.

The arts therapies is a generic term for the four separate professions of music therapy, drama therapy, art therapy, and dance movement psychotherapy. Each of the arts therapies involves specialist training in an art form and how to apply this in a clinical setting.