15 July 2026
Blog from Adam Dodd, Minstead Trust CEO
At Minstead Trust, we are firm believers in actions speaking louder than words.
The most important thing to us is the caring and empowering support we provide to hundreds of people every day.
But we know that words also matter.
They shape how we describe people, how we design support, how we work with families and partners, and how we explain our purpose to the wider world.
For many years, we have described ourselves as a charity supporting people with learning disabilities. That remains a very important part of who we are. Many of the people we support have a learning disability, and we will always be proud of our history, our expertise and our continued commitment in this area.
But as we begin working with our 10-year strategy, we also know that this language no longer describes the full range of people we support, or the people we want to reach in the future.
That is why you will begin to see us using broader term: neuro disabled people.
This includes people with learning disabilities, autistic people, people with acquired brain injuries, people with neurodevelopmental conditions, and others whose lives are affected by the way society responds to neurodisability.
It is a broader term, but it is not just a change of wording. It reflects an important shift in how we think.
For too long, social care has often been built around services, diagnoses and eligibility. People have had to fit into the boxes that already exist. A person may be seen as someone who attends day opportunities, lives in supported housing, needs employment support, or is eligible for a particular funded package.
Those things may be part of someone’s life, but they are not the whole person.
Our new strategy asks us to think more widely. We want neuro disabled people to flourish and make informed choices about what they want for their lives, whether or not they receive funded support from us. That means starting with the person, not the service. It means asking what matters to them, what they want to build, what barriers are in the way, and who needs to be involved.
The term neuro disabled helps us talk about this more clearly.
It recognises that disability is not only about someone’s diagnosis or impairment. It is also about the barriers they face in the world around them. Those barriers might be in employment, housing, education, transport, health, communication, confidence, social connection or access to the right support at the right time.
This matters because our future work will not only be about delivering our own services well, although that will always be essential. It will also be about connecting people to the wider community around them. I’m excited to share more on this shift in the coming months.
I know a change in language can feel uncomfortable at first. Some people may be very familiar with the term learning disability. Some may prefer it. Some may not yet know what neuro disabled means. That is ok.
We are not asking people to suddenly use this new term overnight. We are not replacing one group of people with another. And we are certainly not moving away from people with learning disabilities.
But for some time I have been concerned that ‘learning disability’ suggests the people we support are not capable of learning. Which we know from decades of experience is categorically not the case.
Instead, we are making room for a fuller and more accurate description of the people we support, and the people we believe should be able to benefit from our work in the future.
There will still be times when it is right to say learning disability. There will be times when it is right to say autism, acquired brain injury, or another specific term. Most importantly, there will be times when we should simply use the language a person uses about themselves.
This shift is about being thoughtful, not rigid, and making sure our language reflects the people we are supporting now and in the future.
I’m interested to hear your views on this as we develop our thinking – please do head to my LinkedIn to drop me a message or comment under my post there.