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Birmingham Rathbone Society is a registered charity (Registered Charity Number 516557) that supports people with mild to moderate learning difficulties, within Birmingham and Solihull, to reach their full potential.

We provide training, education and supported employment opportunities, as well as supported living services.

Birmingham Rathbone (formerly named Birmingham Elfrida Rathbone Society) was incorporated in 1985.

The Society was named after the suffragette and social reformer, Elfrida Rathbone, who was born in 1871 and founded an Occupational Centre in 1919 for children who had been excluded from schools because of their learning difficulties.

The Society embraced Elfrida’s philosophy that people with learning difficulties were capable of engaging in useful work and campaigned for more choice, equality, access to services and a better quality of life for people with learning difficulties.

This work is still as necessary today as it was in the early twentieth century and in undertaking this work, Birmingham Rathbone is continuing the work which Elfrida Rathbone began almost a century ago.