The number of new claims to Access to Work is going down –
and this must change. If Government wants more disabled people to work, surely
the least we can expect is sustained action to increase the kind of support in
employment that disabled people value. The Access to Work programme (whilst not
perfect) is popular and cost effective: for every pound spent the Treasury
recoups £1.48.
The latest Government Access to Work statistics show that
from April to September 2011 4830 people started using Access to Work (new
starts) – a full year rate of 9,660. This means the last 3 years of ‘new
starts’ look like this:
2009-10 16,220
2010-11 13,010
2011-12
9,660 (expected - based on half year figures)
This is a rapid decline in the number of people starting to
use Access to Work.
There are all sorts of possible reasons – the fact that
Access to Work is ‘government’s best kept secret’ and not enough people know
about it, the fact that more people are staying on it long-term, leaving little
budget for new people, the fact that jobs are fewer. But whatever the reasons -
it won’t do and action must be taken.
There are compelling reasons to act:
Everyone is very concerned about youth unemployment
generally (and rightly so). But young disabled people really are a forgotten
generation – and many are destined to live without hope unless we act. Young
disabled people are twice as likely as their non-disabled peers to be ‘not in
education, employment or training’. No less than 62% of disabled people aged
16-24 are not working (compared to 41% of non-disabled people of the same age).
Yet Access to Work is not available for internships or all types of work
experience. Employers look for people with some experience gained in the real
world of work – skills that it is much harder for young disabled people to
acquire. How can it possibly be fair to put this group of young people at such
a major disadvantage? Access to Work should cover all internships and work
experience – and should be much better promoted to people seeking
apprenticeships, and their employers.
Because there is a limited budget there is little promotion
of Access to Work. To be sure, large companies and public sector bodies often
know about it and can advise employees and managers – but in the SME sector,
Government programmes like Access to Work are a mystery and often people have
never heard of it. This matters when future economic growth is expected to come
from the SME sector – how will disabled people benefit from any new jobs that
do come on stream, if neither they nor the small employer knows that (for
instance) there may be help with technology, or a support worker, or an
interpreter? Without that knowledge, the
employer may not feel able to take the ‘risk’ (as they see it) of taking on
someone with an impairment they have no idea how to accommodate; and the
employee may not feel able to take the ‘risk’ of moving from benefits to a job.
Access to Work must be promoted specifically to the SME sector.
Every year, 300,000 people leave work through ill-health or
disability, many want to keep their job and - if they and employers knew about
Access to Work - many of them could. However, often they don’t know – and
leaving employment can be a tragedy for them and their family. Access to Work needs
to be better publicised – to individuals, to employers and also to health
services. I’ve lost count of the number of people with acquired impairments who
have told me that after they had the accident/the stroke/the diagnosis of a mental
health problem, no one talked to them about employment - or not until after all the treatment had
been sorted out, by which time they had lost their job, lost contact with their
employer and lost their confidence. This could change – health service staff
don’t have to be employment experts, but they could have enough information to
tell people about major programmes like Access to Work quickly.
The latest figures show that just under 2% of everyone using
Access to Work in the first 6 months of 2011 has a mental health condition (460
people out of 24,340). However, about 43% of people claiming one of the
‘incapacity benefits’ has a mental health condition. The figures are not much
better for people with learning disabilities (just under 6% of Access to Work
users – 1380 out of 24,340). It is quite unfair that these groups of disabled
people are not getting Access to Work support, when they face such disadvantage
in the labour market. They are amongst the people who need it most.
I could go on. We are expecting the Government to respond to
a review I did last year, which recommended radical improvements to Access to
Work: promoting it more widely including to SMEs, health services and mental
health/learning disability organisations, extending its coverage (for instance,
to people doing internships), publicising it for people doing apprenticeships,
bringing the system into the 21st century through opening up information on
products and services on-line that we can all rate – and working with Disabled
People’s Organisations to offer peer support locally, linking employment with
other support, from social care to personal health budgets.
In the present public debate disabled people are portrayed
overwhelmingly as ‘scroungers’ – or ‘pretend disabled’ as Rod Liddle put it in
the Sun recently, arguing many of us are using ‘newly invented illnesses’ like
ME to claim benefits. This is dangerous particularly for those of us with
hidden impairments – who may be assumed not to be ‘genuine’ – and is affecting
all disabled people.
Isn’t there something wrong when disabled people are told we
are not trying hard enough to work – yet the very programme that is popular,
cost effective and proven to help people keep and get jobs is under-used and
under-promoted?
The time for government action to transform Access to Work
is now.
Liz Sayce - Chief Executive - Disability Rights UK
