Disabled people and our organisations have lobbied for our rights in employment - and had a few successes. Next we have strong demands for the forthcoming Disability Employment Strategy – to enable far more of us to get and keep decent jobs.
So far we have successfully influenced:
Access to Work. We urged government to:
- ‘Tear up’ the standard list of things Access to Work would not fund – like software or chairs – because it was confusing, a disincentive to small businesses to employ disabled people, and much hated. In 2013 Government withdrew the standard list
- Remove disincentives to small businesses. Government has announced there will be no ‘cost sharing’ by small businesses – nothing to pay towards Access to Work
- Stop the programme being a ‘best kept secret’ – and market it. Marketing has started
- Make Access to Work available for work experience – otherwise disabled people needing interpreters, PAs or other support cannot get anything on their cv and are hugely disadvantaged compared to their peers. Government has agreed Access to Work can cover some limited work experience e.g. Youth Contract although they still need to cover a lot more.
The number of people getting Access to Work is at last beginning to go back up, after a decline. It's early days, but it wouldn't be happening without the lobbying and influencing of Disability Rights UK and our members.
Yet still:
- There is a crisis of young disabled people’s unemployment. At age 24 there is a 36% gap between the employment rate of disabled and non-disabled young people. If action isn’t taken now this will become another generation living out of work for decades
- Hundreds of thousands of people leave work each year on ‘ill-health grounds’ – when often they want to work and could, with the right support
- Overall, only one in 2 disabled people is in work – and it’s worse for people with learning disabilities or mental health issues
- People with fluctuating conditions find it immensely difficult to get jobs – because there is no cover available for the employer if they do need disability-related time off. So they live on benefits, which costs a lot more, both economically and humanly
- Even when in work we are paid less than our non-disabled peers.
We know what works:
- really personalised support, so disabled people can choose work that interests us and can have control over the support so that it fits the particular job (or work experience, or apprenticeship, or series of contracts)
- peer support. There is simply nothing as powerful as hearing from other disabled people how they have managed technology or support, how they have decided to talk to colleagues about their experience, how they have developed their skills whilst managing an impairment
- positive encouragement to work – not threats of losing benefit. Fear gets in the way of getting a new job – fear of losing benefit if the work doesn’t work out, fear of poverty. As John Lennon put it ‘Then they expect you to get a career, when you can’t really function you’re so full of fear’
- access to specialist support. The generic Work Programme is not working well for disabled people
Disability Rights UK has pioneered some parts of the solution:
- set up a Helpline and web resources for disabled people considering college, university or apprenticeships – see disabilityrightsuk.org
- published Into Higher Education giving tips on choosing and navigating your way through university. We hope to produce a guide Into Apprenticeships shortly.
- conducted the first ever national survey of the experiences of disabled people who have succeeded in their careers, ie starting from success and what we can learn from it. This showed significant factors in career progression were mentoring and career long senior level support. See http://disabilityrightsuk.org/policy-campaigns/reports-and-research/doing-seniority-differently-summary
- set up Radiate, a network of disabled people in more senior jobs who support each other and also support others earlier in their careers – see http://disabilityrightsuk.org/how-we-can-help/leadership/radiate-network
- produced Doing Careers Differently – a guide written by and for disabled people, full of tips on how to progress in your career.
- This body of work – all led by disabled people – was selected as an international example of good practice, based on criteria derived from the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities http://www.zeroproject.org/about/y2013/
The government’s Disability Employment Strategy should:
- Aim to close the skills gap between disabled and non-disabled people – by making work experience, internships, apprenticeships and skills more fully inclusive. Disabled graduates have almost the same employment rates as non-disabled graduates – so we need to ‘get equal’ in our skills and education, to be equal at work
- Learn from other countries: for instance, in Austria, disabled people have a right to an inclusive apprenticeship. They can choose between a prolonged or a partial apprenticeship, with vocational support where needed. 70% are still in employment after 4 years.
- Make all disability employment support fully personalized, backed by peer support. Put Access to Work and Work Choice together so people can have personal budgets for the support that we need, under our control. Disinvest in block contracts. Invest in Disabled People’s Organisations to provide the peer support to give ‘visions of the possible’ and enable us to learn from and support each other.
- Simplify the disability employment programmes. In Australia there is a one-stop shop for employees and employers, with Helpline and website, where you can find out about and access support programmes, information on adjustments, technology etc. Why do we need so many confusing programmes?
- Enable employers to access cover when someone has disability-related absence – so there is no disincentive for the employer in taking someone on who will (unavoidably) need time off due to their impairment.
Appendix What does this mean for older-style separate workshops and workplaces?
The imperative at this point is a Disability Employment Strategy that makes serious headway in tackling the national emergency of young disabled people’s unemployment – and that stops the needless waste of talent as hundreds of thousands of people acquiring impairments leave the workplace when they would prefer to stay.
It is essential to focus on the most effective way to address that simple imperative. This means other models – that are less effective, that do nothing to meet that imperative, that take money on subsidizing non-viable businesses – may need to make way for the approaches that will deliver against the imperative.
Transition is very hard. Some of our member organizations – led by disabled people – are working with people who have been based in Remploy factories. Our members tell us how they are able to alert the ex-Remploy workers to opportunities about which they had no idea; in some cases they had led very constrained lives, doing little on their own initiative and having little awareness of what other disabled people, outside these establishments, were doing.
Whilst the figures given by government and the trade unions differ, it is clear that a proportion of ex-Remploy workers who have chosen to take up support to seek employment have found work or training and that more are doing so as time goes by; but also that a proportion have not. Some former factories have re-opened or are re-opening with different business models or arrangements, to be more viable; others have not. This is very hard for everyone involved.
We are committed to the role of DPOs in supporting people affected, linking people into wider opportunities through the disability movement; and to lobbying for the support people need more broadly.
The number of people made redundant in the last round from Remploy is 1352.
Disability Rights UK is committed to employment and career opportunities for the 6 million disabled people of working age; and to delivering and lobbying for the models that will give large numbers a real right to work.