Building the Right Support matters because it is the policy promise behind much of the modern debate. It said that reliance on mental health inpatient care should reduce and that better community based support should be developed closer to home.
Policy record
Building the Right Support
The national policy promise to reduce reliance on inpatient care and develop better community support for autistic people and people with learning disabilities.
This record discusses national policy and inpatient care for autistic people and people with learning disabilities.
This page uses public records and careful secondary sources only. It avoids unnecessary graphic detail and does not treat any person as a case study.
Why this record matters
The archive places the policy beside cases and data. That is deliberate. A promise only matters if it changes the conditions experienced by real people.
What the public record shows
NHS England describes Building the Right Support as a national plan published in 2015 by NHS England, the Local Government Association and ADASS. Its aim was to reduce reliance on mental health inpatient care for people with a learning disability and autistic people and develop better community based support closer to home.
The Department of Health and Social Care later published an action plan intended to strengthen community support and reduce reliance on inpatient mental health care.
For this archive, the policy is read alongside the continuing data on people still in inpatient services and cases where distance or delayed discharge has caused harm.
Timeline
Building the Right Support published
The national plan set out the move towards community based support and reduced reliance on inpatient care.
Government action plan
The Department of Health and Social Care published an action plan to strengthen community support and reduce inpatient reliance.
Inpatient figures remain high
May 2026 data still recorded thousands of people with a learning disability and autistic people in inpatient services.
Patterns shown
Policy versus implementation
A policy promise can exist while people still remain in hospital for long periods.
Community support gap
Hospital becomes the default when local support is missing.
Distance from ordinary life
The central question is whether people are supported to live ordinary lives close to home.
Awareverse reading
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Building the Right Support is the public test of whether systems can move from managing people to supporting people.
Sources