Transaction Core information standard 2.16.840.1.113883.3.1937.777.28.4.159

• prsb03-issue-39: Sex ()

A description of how you communicate normally including any communication aids you use, for example a hearing aid.

• Include your preferred language of communication, if your first language is not English.
• Include how you would communicate when you are in pain or distress.
• Include how you communicate choices.
• Include how you give feedback or raise a concern.
• Include how you like to receive information

Describe how you would like others to engage and communicate with you, including how you would like to be addressed.

A description of how and when you want someone caring for you to support you.

• This could include support needs in an emergency situation (for example taking blood)
• This could include support you need to maintain important routines or to carry out particular activities, for example: - Personal care routines, Eating and drinking, Bedtime routines, Taking medications, Moving and transitioning
• This could also include support needed with:- wearing glasses/hearing aids/false teeth etc, making informed choices or understanding dangers and risks, managing your emotions, moods and behaviours, memory or confusion.
• Include how your support needs change in different environments. Include any triggers that might result in you needing further support and strategies for avoiding or addressing the triggers. Include how you want the support to be provided.

A description of what is also worth knowing about you for people caring or supporting you.

• This could include a short history of your life (where you have worked, where you lived, important events in your life, important people in your past life).
• This could include a short profile of your current life:- your work / study, your aspirations, your skills, your networks, things you like e.g. particular foods, places, a football team and things you like to talk about, things you dislike
• This could also include any care and support preferences that have not been included elsewhere.

Under the Equality Act 2010, organisations have a legal duty to make changes in their approach or provision to ensure that services are as accessible to people with disabilities as they are for everybody else. These changes are called reasonable adjustments.

Reasonable adjustments can mean alterations to buildings by providing lifts, wide doors, ramps and tactile signage, but may also mean changes to policies, procedures and staff training to ensure that services work equally well for people with physical or sensory disabilities, learning disabilities or long-term conditions such as dementia.

Other adjustments include longer appointments, providing easy read materials or communications via a carer. This legal duty is anticipatory which means a service should know about a person’s need for adjustments when they are referred or present for care. For this to happen, and for optimum care to be delivered, adjustments need to be recorded and shared across the NHS.