Learning disability manifesto calls for support from General Election candidates

14 June 2024

Minstead Trust is calling on General Election candidates to lend their support to a new manifesto for people with learning disabilities.

The Trust supports more than 320 people from Poole to Portsmouth to live in their own homes, learn new skills and seek employment.

Many people they support have endured a torrid few years; lonely and confused during Covid, disproportionately affected by the cost-of-living crisis and severely lacking in employment opportunities.

Access to effective healthcare is a major problem for people with learning disabilities and 42% of deaths in 2022 were deemed ‘avoidable’.

During this cost of living crisis over 70% of people with learning disabilities are going without essentials in their daily lives.

Around 65% of people with a learning disability want to have a job, but under 25% are employed, leaving many people without the pride and self-sufficiency that comes from employment.

To address these issues and many more, Minstead Trust is backing Learning Disability England’s Good Lives Manifesto.

The document sets out six key demands for candidates running for election to support:

1. Be a champion for the rights of people with learning disabilities
2. Reform social care so it upholds the rights of people and their carers and gives fair pay to social care workers
3. Provide good health services
4. Help people with learning disabilities get jobs they want
5. Ensure the same access to housing as non-disabled people

Adam Dodd, Minstead Trust Chief Executive, said: ‘The people we support desperately need change in how they are supported, and so the chances they have to live independent, fulfilled lives.

‘Local authorities are aspirational in their contracts, but only fund to cover the most basic needs. Truly person-centred care is impossible if only one person is looking after a houseful of vulnerable adults.

‘People who aspire to a career in care and support need the opportunity to earn a reasonable wage that fairly reflects the breadth and depth of social, emotional, and intellectual skill required to be an excellent support worker.

People with learning disabilities need their leaders to stand up for them and deliver the reform the adult social care sector so desperately needs.’

Minstead Trust is inviting the candidates to visit their sites in each constituency to learn more about the issues facing people with learning disabilites and how the next government can help to change their situation.

Read the full Good Lives Manifesto.