The role of specialist inpatient rehabilitation services for people with intellectual disability, autism and mental health, behavioural or forensic needs Mahesh Odiyoor, Samuel Joseph Tromans, Regi T. Alexander, Srinaveen Akbari, Gill Bell, Sandy Bering, Sujeet Jaydeokar and Amrith Shetty Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a professional consensus position with regard to the provision of specialist inpatient rehabilitation services for people with intellectual disability (ID), autism and mental health, behavioural or forensic needs in the UK. Design/methodology/approach – The concept of rehabilitation is discussed, as well as the functions and goals of specialist inpatient rehabilitation services with regard to the aforementioned contexts. Current use of rehabilitation beds is considered, both on a regional and national scale, as well as various outcome measures, including effectiveness, patient safety and patient experience. Findings – There is a clear need for specialist inpatient rehabilitation services, though historically there have been instances of inappropriate admissions, as well as lengthy inpatient stays that could have been significantly reduced with the right type of community support package. Such services should be subjected to rigorous measurement of outcome measures, to determine that patients within such services are receiving a consistently high standard of care. Additionally, amendments to current legal frameworks should be considered, with a view to accommodating for individuals with capacity who require continuous community-based supervision. Originality/value – To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first article detailing a professional consensus position for specialist inpatient rehabilitation services for people with ID, autism and mental health, behavioural or forensic needs. Keywords Mental health, Intellectual disability, Rehabilitation, Forensic, Autism spectrum disorder, Inpatient Paper type General review Introduction Service provision for people with intellectual disabilities (ID) and mental health, behavioural or forensic needs has been in the spotlight following the events at Winterbourne View hospital, where emotional and physical abuse was uncovered by the BBC Panorama documentary Undercover Care (Pettie, 2011). Following the documentary, a government inquiry led to the publication of “Transforming care: a national response to Winterbourne View hospital” (Department of Health, 2012a), which detailed actions to avoid repetition of the Winterbourne events, as well as a “Concordat: programme of action” (Department of Health, 2012b). A key concern was that people admitted to such services stayed for too long, and this care model was described as merely a new form of institutional care (Devapriam et al., 2015). The report and concordat objectives were intended to be met by June 2014, but this commitment failed, so a new inquiry took place, known as the first Bubb report (Transforming Care and Commissioning Steering Group, 2014). The Bubb reports’ recommendations formed the basis for the Building the Right Support (BRS) (NHS England et al., 2015) and Care Roles to Deliver the Transforming Received 6 January 2019 Revised 4 April 2019 27 May 2019 Accepted 3 June 2019 (Information about the authors can be found at the end of this article.) PAGE 204 j ADVANCES IN MENTAL HEALTH AND INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES j VOL. 13 NO. 5 2019, pp. 204-215, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 2044-1282 DOI 10.1108/AMHID-01-2019-0001