To mark Learning Disability Week Sara Lewis, Universal Care Plan (UCP) Project and Communications Officer, explains how the UCP is helping to meet the care wishes and needs of Londoners with a learning disability (18 June 2025).
Learning Disability Week
Congratulations to Mencap and all their partners for running another fantastic campaign aimed at raising awareness of the challenges faced by people with a learning disability.
The theme of this year’s Learning Disability Week is ‘do you see me?’ It is all about ensuring people with a learning disability are seen, heard and valued.
The campaign is showcasing some incredible people and inspiring stories including Ellie Goldstein who became the first British Vogue cover model with Down’s Syndrome and business owner Michael Beynon who is competing for Great Britain in the Special Olympics in the sport of boccia.
Through the Universal Care Plan we are proud to be helping to ensure that the voices of more people with a learning disability are heard.
Health and care challenges
People with a Learning Disability often need to access a range of different health and care services including urgent, emergency or community care.
Unfortunately, far too often information about their personalised support needs is not effectively shared between these services or not kept up to date.
This can prevent them from receiving the right care in a timely way and this can have serious consequences.
Jessica Howe, Learning Disabilities and Vulnerabilities Specialist atLondon Ambulance Service, said:
“The demands placed on people accessing health services can be significant – waiting in a busy ward, tolerating equipment, transitioning onto an ambulance, needing to communicate pain, or new staff recognising a health deterioration.
“These experiences can be distressing, especially during periods of illness, stress and anxiety. Without personalised adaptations to minimise the impact, these demands can become barriers to accessing timely healthcare with serious consequences.”
How the Universal Care Plan can help
The UCP is an NHS service that digitally shares personalised care plans with health and care professionals across the capital.
Initially developed to support end-of-life and palliative care planning, earlier this year the UCP was expanded to support a wider range of people including those with a learning disability. Currently there are around 960 care plans on the UCP system for people with learning disabilities in London.
The UCP is co-created with the individual, and where appropriate, their family or carers. It captures a range of practical and clinical information about a person’s care wishes and needs such as communication differences and reasonable adjustments required to help the person feel more comfortable and fully access their care.
Once saved on the UCP system it is available to health and social care professionals involved in their care – including those in the London Ambulance Service, hospitals and GP practices – so they are aware of how best to support the individual. As Jessica Howe says:
“Personalising care includes adapting communication, developing rapport, supporting varied behavioural presentations, recognising soft signs of deterioration, working with support networks and considering sensory support needs. Capturing this information on a UCP with the individual and those that know them well, enables organisations to have a joint approach to providing good quality care and reducing barriers.”
Next steps
It is great news that within just a few months of expanding the UCP to support people with a learning disability we are heading towards 1,000 Londoners with a learning disability care plan on the platform.
Our work continues to ensure that more Londoners with a learning disability have a UCP so more people benefit from the joined up care it supports. This includes ongoing work with the Camden, Islington and Waltham Forest Community Learning Disability teams who are piloting the implementation of the UCP in their areas.
This will also help ensure that more people with a learning disability are ‘seen, heard and valued’. Duvie Dafione puts it best “If the doctor understands what you feel matters to you then it is a lot easier to treat you because they know where you are coming from.”
You can hear more from Duvie and other People with Lived Experience in this short video about the UCP.
If you have a learning disability, or are a carer or family member for someone with a learning disability, and are interested in finding out more about how to get a Universal Care Plan please speak to a health or care professional.
To learn more about the UCP, including how to access it and available learning resources, click here. Easy read materials for patients are also available here.