A service providing day and residential care in Ireland has improved the general and oral health care of people with learning disability. Sheila Doyle and Caroline Dalton report

Over past decades the promotion of normalisation and socially inclusive policies has resulted in a move from institutional care to community living for people with a learning disability (Wolfensberger 1972). Service providers seek to ensure that people experience greater choice and control in their lives and are included within their communities (Jones 1999, Northway et al 2005). According to the National Intellectual Disability Database 2007, 8,262 individuals (or 32.3 per cent of people with learning disabilities in the Republic of Ireland) live in residential settings, mainly in the community (Kelly et al 2007). ‘The numbers of people accommodated in community group homes and in residential centres have increased and decreased respectively, on an almost continuous basis, since data collection commenced in 1996,’ Kelly et al note.