As a learning disability nurse, I absolutely know the value and impact of our profession. Every day we see how our skills change lives - from enabling access to healthcare and promoting independence, to advocating for people when their voices are not heard.

However, I am also aware of the significant challenges our profession is facing. Across the UK our learning disability nursing workforce is shrinking. Figures suggest a drop of nearly 40% since 2010, and many universities have closed or have paused learning disability nursing programmes because of low uptake. Some regions in England now have no ‘building-based’ learning disability pathways at all.

At the same time, demand for our expertise is growing, with the latest LeDeR report published in September 2025 showing that adults with a learning disability die on average 19.5 years younger than the general population. This leaves us with a difficult question: how do we secure the future of learning disability nursing?

The workforce challenge

Our profession is at risk of becoming too few in number to meet the needs of the people we serve, and this is due to many factors:

• Our field is not well understood and under-recognised compared with adult, child or mental health nursing
• We face two identity crises - the identity of being a Registered Nurse in Learning Disabilities (who may or may not work as a learning disability nurse) and the identity of learning disability nursing jobs (that may be undertaken by a RNLD or a nurse from another field
• Students and prospective students often don’t hear about the option of learning disability nursing as a career
• Low interest in learning disability nursing courses results in universities closing programmes as they are no longer financially viable
• Retention is difficult when students are told that there are limited options in the learning disability nursing field and that there is no future in our profession.

Broadening the scope: a way forward?

I qualified as a learning disability nurse in 2004. Since then, my specialist skills have enabled me to broaden my scope to work across not only learning disability services but also to focus on reducing health inequalities more broadly and in particular for autistic people. This has given me the ability to have an exciting and varied career.

I feel strongly that if we could broaden the scope of learning disability nursing to include neuro-disability more widely, including areas such as autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, acquired brain injury, cerebral palsy, and other neurodevelopmental conditions that we could attract more students to our field, broaden the scope of our expertise, expand career opportunities and also ultimately strengthen the workforce available for learning disability nursing roles.

What do you think?

This of course raises important questions about our professional identity. How do you see the future of our profession? Should we broaden our scope or protect learning disability nursing as it stands?

The RCN Learning Disability Nursing Review is a chance for all of us to shape the future of our profession. We are at a crucial crossroads, and I urge every registered learning disability nurse, student nurse, educator, and stakeholder to take part.

Find out more about the first tranche of online workshops.

Please share your experiences, your ideas, and your hopes for the future. Let’s make sure our voices are heard, because they matter.