Inclusive Health – enhancing the lives of individuals with learning disabilities
We are funding a series of research and education projects to support the needs and outcomes of people living with a learning disability and the nursing staff who support them. The programme will be delivered over a four-year period at a cost of around £360,000. Read more here about our learning disability and learning disability nursing grant-making programme here.
In 2019, we funded a scoping review, undertaken by the University of West London, to identify learning disability nursing interventions and their impact on the health of people with a lived experience of a learning disability.
A learning disability is a lifelong condition which significantly affects an individual’s ability to carry out everyday activities, understand new or complex information and learn new skills (NHS, 2018; Mencap, 2022). There are currently 1.5 million people in the UK with a learning disability which accounts for 2.16% of adults and 2.5% of children (ONS, 2020). Despite this, NHS figures from 2012-2022 show that the number of registered learning disability nurses in England has fallen by 31% in the past decade - from 4,353 to 2,983 comparatively.