Kent and Medway Mental Health NHS Trust has announced the launch of a new Learning Disability Nursing Shared Decision-Making Council, working in partnership with NHS organisations across the region to strengthen the future of the profession and improve outcomes for people with learning disabilities.
The move comes amid growing concern over workforce sustainability, with a national decline in learning disability nurses and no local university training route in the South East contributing to recruitment challenges. NHS leaders say the new council is designed to address these pressures by enhancing workforce planning, boosting retention, and creating more robust career pathways.
Strengthening workforce voice and leadership
The council will bring together learning disability nurses from across Kent and Medway, creating a formal platform for collaboration and shared decision-making. Its focus will include workforce development, professional progression and ensuring frontline expertise directly informs service design and delivery.
Julie Kirby, Acting Chief Nurse at Kent and Medway Mental Health NHS Trust, said:
“We know that people with a learning disability experience significantly poorer health outcomes and in many cases die 19–20 years earlier than the general population. For people with profound learning disabilities, this gap can be even wider due to complex health needs.
“As a system, we are committed to improving these outcomes by ensuring people can access the right care, at the right time, from appropriately trained professionals.
“We have listened to our learning disability nurses and worked with them to shape this response. Their expertise is essential in helping us improve services and reduce inequalities.
“This council represents an important step forward in ensuring learning disability nurses are directly involved in decision-making and workforce planning across our region.”
Addressing inequalities in care
Learning disability nurses play a critical role across physical and mental healthcare settings. They support patients to navigate services, improve communication between individuals and clinicians, and help reduce longstanding health inequalities.
The trust highlighted that engagement work with nurses across the region directly informed the development of the council. Feedback identified the need for stronger professional support, clearer career progression routes and long-term workforce sustainability.
This insight has already been shared with chief nurses and senior NHS leaders across the region, helping to shape a coordinated system-wide response.
A system-wide approach to sustainability
The new council will form part of a broader workforce strategy across Kent and Medway, which includes:
- Exploring new and future training pathways
- Strengthening recruitment and retention initiatives
- Expanding career development opportunities for specialist nurses
By establishing a structured forum for collaboration, the council will enable nurses to actively contribute to workforce planning, service innovation and quality improvement across multiple organisations.
Healthcare leaders say this approach is essential to maintaining specialist expertise within learning disability services and ensuring that future care models remain responsive to patient needs.
Looking ahead
The introduction of the Learning Disability Nursing Shared Decision-Making Council signals a shift towards more inclusive, clinician-led workforce planning, with nurses playing a central role in shaping the direction of care delivery.
As NHS systems continue to tackle workforce shortages and health inequalities, initiatives like this are expected to become increasingly important in sustaining specialist services and improving outcomes for vulnerable populations.
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