Foundation for People with Learning Disabilities

The Foundation for People with Learning Disabilities (FPLD), hosted by LSBU, is a national centre for participatory research and innovation. Our work is dedicated to improving the lives of people with learning disabilities by promoting rights, reducing inequalities, and enabling greater social inclusion.
FPLD’s approach is rooted in co-production. We work with people with lived experience of learning disabilities as co-researchers, peer interviewers, advisors, and knowledge exchange leads. Together, we identify priorities and shape research that leads to real-world change.

We focus on:

Improving access to healthcare and mental health services.
Investigating the experiences of people with learning disabilities in the criminal justice system.
Creating inclusive pathways through education and employment.
Recording oral histories and life stories to challenge historical exclusion.
Exploring climate change, loneliness, and digital inclusion through community innovation.
What sets us apart is our commitment to amplifying neurodivergent voices in research and policymaking. Our interdisciplinary work bridges academia, policy, and practice to ensure people with learning disabilities are seen, heard, and valued.

FPLD is a founding member of the Valuing People Alliance, a consortium of organisations committed to upholding the rights, inclusion, and voices of people with learning disabilities. The alliance informs government policy, shares best practice, and supports co-produced research and advocacy.

Feeling Down: Looking After My Mental Health
A pioneering self-help guide developed with and for people with learning disabilities to recognise and manage low mood. This resource helps users identify triggers, explore strategies for wellbeing, and seek support when needed. It has been widely used in services, education, and peer support groups.
Pass it On
This project promotes peer-led mental health education and support. People with learning disabilities are trained to deliver workshops and support others in their community around issues such as low mood, anxiety, and emotional wellbeing. The model is built on empowerment and shared experience.
Burdett Discharge Toolkit
Developed in collaboration with people with learning disabilities, learning disability nurses and NHS Trusts, this toolkit supports safe and person-centred discharge planning for people with learning disabilities leaving hospital. It ensures that discharge is planned in partnership with the person, their family, and support networks, reducing risks of readmission and distress.
Pelican Project
An innovative arts and inclusion initiative supporting young people with learning disabilities to explore identity, community, and self-expression through creative performance. The project builds confidence, fosters friendship, and promotes positive representation through inclusive theatre and storytelling.
The Social Lives of People with Learning Disabilities
A new co-produced research project exploring friendship, community participation, and identity through oral histories, creative arts, and policy workshops.
Digital Lives and Online Safety
Participatory study on how people with learning disabilities use the internet to promote inclusion in digital policy, focusing on barriers to access online shopping, and avoiding dangers of online harm.
Learning Disabilities and the Criminal Justice System
Research into the experiences of people with learning disabilities in secure care and prison, highlighting rights, communication support, and service reform.
Peter and Friends Book Series is a co-produced easy-read book series created by people with learning disabilities and/or autism alongside NHS staff, family carers, and advocates. The books explore real-life experiences of mental health and the COVID-19 pandemic in accessible, illustrated formats. Developed through equal partnerships, all contributors are credited as authors and share decision-making power. Volumes include: Peter and Friends Talk About COVID-19 – Helping people understand the pandemic through accessible storytelling and lived experience and Peter and Friends Talk About Mental Health – A personal and practical guide to emotional wellbeing, featuring honest reflections on anxiety, depression, resilience, and support. The series is widely used across the NHS, universities, and advocacy groups, and was co-published with Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust and London South Bank University.

Feeling Down Guide

A pioneering self-help guide developed with and for people with learning disabilities to recognise and manage low mood. This resource helps users identify triggers, explore strategies for wellbeing, and seek support when needed. It has been widely used in services, education, and peer support groups.

Peter and Friends Volume 1 – A book about COVID-19 and having a learning disability and/or austism

Peter and Friends is a collaboration between Oxleas NHS Trust, LSBU and the Foundation for People with Learning Disabilities. We felt that the voices of people with learning disabilities had largely been forgotten during the pandemic. The book features the stories and experiences of people with learning disabilities during the pandemic and the remarkable resilience they and their carers have shown.

In writing their stories many people have been assisted by family, friends and carers in different ways. This is why the style changes, to try and catch the person and their preferred style of communication.

The book features stories from people in a variety of different situations and features international contributions from as far away as Australia, Canada and Ghana.

Peter and Friends Volume 2 – Peter and Friends talk about mental health in people with learning disabilities and/or autism

In the second volume of the Peter and Friends series, people with learning disabilities and their allies talk about their experiences of mental health.

Burdett Nursing Discharge Tool for people with learning disabilities

It is estimated that half a percent of individuals with learning disabilities receive treatment in psychiatric hospitals, with half of this number in forensic hospitals. Many of those people with learning disabilities in secure hospitals have been admitted from the criminal justice system (CJS). They are often associated with poorer outcomes, and in many cases are more likely to have future contact with the CJS, to receive a custodial or more restrictive or punitive sentencing then their non-learning disabled peers. It is still the case that many people with learning disabilities are admitted due to a lack of appropriate high-support community provisions.

The project developed a person-centred discharge tool to support people with learning disabilities leaving hospital. It uses a systemic framework to inform the assessment, planning, implementation and evaluation during the discharge period. The tool is called the Burdett Discharge Planner. It was developed using a grant from the Burdett Trust for Nursing to develop a discharge planner for nurses that requires active participation and decision-making from service users throughout the process in order to ensure a person-centred/recovery approach. To accompany the discharge tool there is a guidance manual to assist with implementation and to standardise the process. The manual can be used by both learning disability nurses and those from other fields of nursing supporting people with learning disabilities.

Pass-it-on Workbook

As part of FPLD’s project on mental health, Pass-it-on, we developed a workbook that can be used with people with learning disabilities to help them to understand mental health better and to think about the things they can do to maintain good mental health.

Feeling Down report: Improving the mental health of people with learning disabilities

This report is designed to help promote positive mental health by offering information, case studies and real-life experiences of people with learning disabilities and their carers, and their strategies for enhancing their mental health.

Learning Disabilities Positive Practice Guide for IAPT (Improving Access to Psychological Therapies) services

This positive practice guide is aimed at people who work in IAPT services and aims to support the provision of equitable access to NICE recommended psychological therapies for people with learning disabilities.

The guide summarises the needs of people with learning disabilities and outlines the reasonable adjustments that are recommended to ensure that people with learning disabilities get the maximum benefit from treatment within IAPT services.

Employers Guide to employing people with a learning disability

This guide explores the practical implications of adopting a more inclusive approach to recruiting people with learning disabilities.

We know that people with learning disabilities can and do make hard working and enthusiastic employees. They bring new skills, talents and perspectives to their employers and, with the right support, will remain loyal and longstanding employees. The guide presents information about supported employment and job coaching including tips on how and where to get this type of support, how to get funding for it and how to work with job coaches. It also captures the experiences of a number of employees with a learning disability.

Building community through Circles of Friends

A practical guide to making inclusion a reality for people with learning disabilities.

A Life Without Fear

The report, A Life Without Fear was a call for collective action against learning disability hate crime.

What is a learning disability?

A learning disability relates to the way a person’s brain works. It affects the way a person learns new things, and it affects how a person understands information and communicates. This means they can have difficulty in:

Understanding new or complex information
Learning new skills
Coping independently

A learning disability is different for everybody. No two people are the same.

A learning disability can be mild, moderate or severe/profound:

In general, people with a mild learning disability will be able to work and maintain good social relationships. However, they may still need some support in more complicated areas of life such as managing their finances or filling out forms.
In general, someone with a moderate learning disability can learn to develop some degree of independence in self-care and communication but will need varying degrees of support such as washing or dressing or in going out safely.
People with severe or profound learning disability will have a significant limitation in self-care, eating, continence, communication and mobility.

What causes a learning disability?

We don’t always know why someone has a learning disability. Sometimes the brain’s development is affected, before birth, during their birth, or in early childhood.

This can be caused by:

The mother becoming ill during pregnancy;
The mother drinking during pregnancy;
A very premature birth
Problems during the birth that stop enough oxygen getting to the brain;
The unborn baby inheriting certain genes from its parents that make having a learning disability more likely;
Illness such as meningitis or injury in very early childhood;
Conditions caused by chromosome differences such as Down’s syndrome or Turner syndrome

Learning disability health statistics

People with learning disabilities experience significant health inequalities when compared to the rest of the population.

It is estimated that there are around 1.3 million people with a learning disability in England. However, the number of people with learning disabilities recorded in health and welfare systems is much lower.

(Public Health England, 2023)

The median age at which adults with a learning disability die (62.5 years) is almost 20 years younger than the general population. However, adults with a learning disability from ethnic groups other than white have a median age at death even lower. For example, people with a learning disability from Asian and Asian British communities having a median age of death of just 43 years.

(LeDeR Annual Report Learning from Lives and Deaths: People with a Learning Disability and Autistic People 2023)

Almost 39% of the deaths of adults with a learning disability reported to LeDeR were avoidable, compared to around 22% in the general population. The most common cause of death were influenza and pneumonia, cancers of the digestive tract and ischaemic heart disease.

(LeDeR Annual Report Learning from Lives and Deaths: People with a Learning Disability and Autistic People 2023)

People with learning disabilities are less likely to get cancer screening. For example, the percentage of patients with a learning disability who had a breast cancer screening test in 2021-22 was 47.2% compared to 61.9% of people without a learning disability.

(Health and Care of People with Learning Disabilities, Experimental Statistics 2021-2022, NHS England)

A review of existing research showed that the odds of having a diagnosis of diabetes was 2.46 times higher for people with learning disabilities compared to the general population.

(Vancampfort et al., 2022)

People with learning disabilities are more likely to be in the more severe category of obesity than people without a learning disability.

(Health and Care of People with Learning Disabilities, Experimental Statistics 2023-2024, NHS England)

A number of studies suggest that the rate of mental health problems experienced by people with learning disabilities is double that for the general population.

(Cooper et al., 2007)

Anxiety – In 2023-24, the percentage of registered patients with a learning disability who had a diagnosis of anxiety was 9.9%. This compared to 5.1% of people without a learning disability.

(Health and Care of People with Learning Disabilities, Experimental Statistics 2023-2024, NHS England)