Mencap has signed up Katie Price to support its three-year national campaign against disability hate crime.

The former glamour model, whose nine-year-old son Harvey has autism, restricted sight and a learning disability, said: “As the mother of a disabled child I know all too well how hurtful and distressing bullying, harassment and abuse can be.”

The campaign, Stand by me, will see Mencap work with police forces across the country to improve the way they treat people with a learning disability and encourage them to help stamp out hate crime.

Price’s support for the campaign comes in the wake of her battle to get Channel 4 to apologise for offensive comments that comedian Frank Boyle made about her son on a programme on the channel last year. More than 500 viewers complained to TV watchdog Ofcom about the joke and Mencap supported Price in her confrontation with the channel. Boyle refused to apologise but Channel 4 eventually did.

Mencap estimates that nine in ten people with a learning disability are verbally harassed or exposed to violence because of their disability.

Sky Living is due to screen a programme tonight at 9pm about Katie and Harvey called ‘Standing up for Harvey’ (pictured). It was produced after Boyle's comment on Channel 4. Mencap’s head of communications and marketing Sarah Bernard was interviewed for the programme.

Last month Mencap scooped the Overall Award at this year’s Charity Awards for a previous campaign called Death by Indifference, which sought to improve the treatment of people with learning disabilities in hospitals.