Building the Right Support was published in 2015 by NHS England, the Local Government Association and the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services as part of the Transforming Care Programme. The guidance supports NHS and local authority commissioners to reduce the number of people with a learning disability and autistic people in a mental health inpatient setting and to develop community alternatives to inpatient care in line with the National service model.

Following on from Building the Right Support we published a national service model which is also available in easy read. We also published a document called supplementary guidance for commissioners (the people who plan and pay for care) which tells them what good services should look like.

Building on that service model we also published three model service specifications, also available in easy read, to give commissioners more detail about the kinds of specialist support they could provide in their local communities.

In collaboration with the Local Government Association and Association of Directors of Adult Social Services as partners in care and health, we published a letter which identifies five key actions that will have the biggest impact on supporting people with a learning disability and autistic people to leave mental health hospital.

Nearly 10,000 discharges to the community have been achieved since 2015. The letter asks colleagues working in integrated care systems across health and social care to make a concerted effort to continue to help people with a learning disability and autistic people leave hospital when they no longer need hospital care.

This letter follows on from the publication of the Joint guiding principles for integrated care systems – learning disability and autism in October 2023. These principles for integrated care systems set out how partners in local systems should work together to improve the lives and outcomes of people with a learning disability and autistic people, of all ages.