Fulfilling Potential? ESA and the fate of the Work Related Activity Group
This new report, written by Catherine Hale, a Work Programme service user, examines back-to-work programmes for people with disabilities and health conditions. Mind has supported her with this vital work to help bring about changes to back-to-work support for people with mental health problems.
Disability Rights UK has endorsed this report.
The report is based on the experiences of over 500 people being required to engage in back-to-work schemes. It criticises the type of support into work available to disabled people as inadequate and generic rather tailored to individual needs. At the same time the report highlights the anxiety of disabled people who face potential sanctions should they fail to comply with required activities, which will not help them get work.
The report recommends:
- That claimants in the work related activity group (WRAG) be supported in a new way/scheme which addresses their significant disability-related barriers to work.
- Reform of the present system where an award of ESA all but bars access to Work Choice). ESA should instead be a genuine gateway to specialist disability employment support.
- Improvement in the method of assessment of support needs (whether part of the WCA or through an additional assessment).
- Integration of the assessment and support process with Access to Work and tollowing the recommendations of the Sayce Review, expand, promote and award Access to Work to disabled jobseekers on a portable basis.
- Employers should be encouraged to widen job opportunities for disabled people by offering flexible working times, working from home, creating jobs involving fewer than 16 hours per week, and offering the opportunity of a job trial instead of an interview.
- Engagement with employers in job adaptation and creation is the key to placing disabled people in suitable and sustainable jobs. Locally commissioned services within local authorities or the NHS (such as the Individual Placement and Support model) are often more successful than national schemes for this reason.
- Conditionality should be fundamentally rebalanced to place the onus on the service provider to devise a strategy to integrate the disabled person into work, based upon the assumption that the vast majority of people are motivated to work and that voluntary participation is the most effective form of engagement for all but a few.
- Employment support should be better integrated with health, social care and education services.
You can view the report at http://www.mind.org.uk/news-campaigns/news/work-programme-pushing-people-with-disabilities-further-from-work/#.U5l3aigvClB