People in Liverpool and the rest of the UK are being urged to write to their MP asking them to take action to improve care for people with learning disabilities.

Following a distressing Panorama programme on Monday night, which showed the abuse of people with learning disabilities by staff at Winterbourne View residential care home, the Learning Disability Coalition has launched an online form allowing people to write to their MP – and ask them to take action to reform the social care system – simply and easily. To access the form click LDC e-action.

Sarah Jones, Chief Executive for Mencap Liverpool, said: “Two changes need to take place to ensure that abuse of this kind never happens again.

“First, we need to massively influence public perception so that no-one ever thinks that it is acceptable to treat someone with a learning disability as ‘entertainment’. The abuse at Winterbourne was so severe and prolonged because there were a large number of people involved – either directly as perpetrators, spectators, or who people who chose to ‘look the other way’.

“We need to ensure that policy is influenced so that instances of abuse are picked up immediately and dealt with it rigorously – writing to our MPs is an important and effective way of helping to achieve this.

“We would like to encourage every person in Liverpool to fill in the form and to pass the link on to everyone they know – the more people are talking about this, the greater the change will be.”