Care England Briefing - Preventing choking deaths among people with learning disabilities
Care England, the largest and most representative body for independent adult social care providers in England, today publishes Preventing Choking Deaths Among People with Learning Disabilities, a major new report and its accompanying toolkit at a Parliamentary event hosted by Gregory Stafford MP in the House of Commons. The event brought together providers, care workers, those with lived experience, regulators, legal partners to discuss the toolkit and the importance of ensuring good practice in choking prevention.
Due to the increase of choking related deaths in working age adults with learning disabilities and or autism, Care England is proud to have collaborated with sector partners on this report and toolkit with the aim of reducing these preventable deaths. The publication brings together evidence, practical guidance and sector insight to support providers to identify choking risks earlier, strengthen care planning, improve staff awareness and act before avoidable harm occurs.
Choking is a serious and often preventable cause of death for people with learning disabilities. Where swallowing difficulties, eating and drinking support needs, medication, communication barriers, or gaps in care planning are not fully understood or acted upon, the risk of harm increases significantly. The report documents how those risks arise, where current practice falls short, and what a consistent, proactive and person-centred approach to choking prevention looks like in practice.
The report also identifies a consistent pattern across care settings where choking risks are frequently identified, but the actions needed to address them are not always consistently understood, recorded, communicated or followed through. Risk assessments are not always updated when a person’s condition changes. Communication between professionals involved in a person’s care is not always adequate. Staff confidence in managing choking risks varies significantly between services and between individuals within the same team.
The report calls for choking prevention to be treated as a standing priority within care culture, not something addressed through one-off training that fades from practice. It sets out what good looks like across risk assessment, care planning, staff development, multi-professional communication and the meaningful involvement of families and people with lived experience.
The toolkit provides downloadable resources in editable Word and PDF formats, alongside an easy-read version and supporting materials for use across frontline teams. It is designed to help providers take stock of their own systems, strengthen how risks are identified, escalated, recorded and communicated, and build the kind of everyday practice that makes choking prevention sustainable rather than reactive.
The full report and toolkit are available to download here
To read more about our launch event and the lived experience stories behind this report, click here.
If you have any questions about the report, please contact policy@careengland.org.uk.