Theme: Employment, Assessments & Mental Health

“The Spartacus Network team report Beyond the Barriers laid out solutions and generated a lot of interest. It was about disabled people not only complaining about the problems, but also providing solutions. It looked at assessment criteria and what happens after assessment, and what we can do that is more proactive. How we can better define who can work but isn’t offered work. We have something like only 17% of learning disabled people in work who are physically well but just needed additional assistance. It was disappointing that in 2015 the allowance for supported employers was reduced, taking away the extra money they needed to provide assistance for people with learning disabilities. Prior to that we had the removal of Remploy and it always seemed that whilst they were pushing people into work, they we actually reducing opportunities for those who were physically fit and capable of work.”

“Disabled people fall into two camps. There are those who are physically fit and capable of work but aren’t getting assistance into “real” work. Instead we start to play people who have disabilities that cause ill health or make them very distanced from the workplace and that’s poor use of money and resources. It’s very defeating. It’s not just defeating in economic and real terms, it’s also defeating for people who are ill.

“The world of work changed with covid. It changed for the better with working from home. There’s now a lot of push-back against working from home. The world of work isn’t sympathetic to people who are ‘flaky’. People who have fluctuating conditions, who can feel brilliant one day and awful the next. We end up being plagued with guilt.”

“If you don’t have much energy, you spend all available energy on trying to keep body and soul together, to do things like wash your hair and brush your teeth. That can use up all your ‘spoons’. So if you use your spoons enthusiastically and stupidly by working for an employer because the government demands that you do, where are the spoons left for self-care and ordinary activity? Most sick and disabled people cannot compete with 40 hour working weeks and commuting.”

“At the recent Difference North East event on disability employment there was a lot of discussion around flexibility and the need for employers to not expect people to fit into rigid jobs, ideas, policies and processes. There needs to be a lot more flexibility to meet individual needs. I thinks some employers are getting that now – and covid has helped them to realise that – but I think there’s still a long way to go. More flexible contracts, more flexible working conditions. Recruitment processes can be really biased. Some of this comes from standardisation and high volumes of applications. Current processes don’t really respond well to individual need and there is a lot of concern about discrimination. Stigma is also a problem and how reliant we are on individual line managers. Your experience as an employee is often very much dependent on how good your line manager is. If they are not properly trained and aware it can make your life very difficult.”

“We’ve got to talk about people who are chronically ill. It’s a struggle a lot of the time. The WCA in particular is a disaster. It needs to be sorted out. Ideally, everybody wants it scrapped, but that’s not going to happen. The constant reassessments and high volumes of appeals and tribunals cause stress which leads to mental health issues. WCA and UC forms do not allow enough room for the information that they expect people to provide. It really isn’t helping.”

“With regards to employment, there are people who are disabled but well, and there are people who are chronically sick and it takes up all their time to get through the day. What do we do with those people? We don’t want to write them off, but employers will not employ us because we’re too much of a liability. It’s absolutely ridiculous that we’re funnelling chronically sick people down the route towards some kind of work. How do we change all this? We’ve got to look at the whole thing, not just pockets of stuff. How can we change employers’ attitudes?”

“The assessment process itself needs to be in plain English. Most applicants don’t understand what they are being asked. Not because they are uneducated, but because the language is complex. We need basic language. One of the other things that irritates me is that when you get your award, people are not sure of what’s required of them.”

“Disabled people and MPs are not using the research published by the Prevent Double Harm project. No one is going back to basics: the assessment is based on fatally flawed government-commissioned research. It was created on policy-based research, not evidence-based research.”

“There was a golden opportunity when Marsha de Cordova had a back bench debate recently but it was a disappointment. Constantly telling the Minister sad stories was a bit pointless because you didn’t tell her anything she hadn’t heard before. She gave the standard commentary because her civil servants wrote it for her before she came to the meeting. Unless MPs start challenging these people on things they don’t expect, you’re going to get nowhere. She knows all about the sad stories and she really doesn’t care.”

“We won’t get rid of the WCA if we don’t challenge the reasons for having it. The WCA was co-designed by corporate America [Unum insurance company]. When are you going to start using this evidence to get you off the hook?”

“We have to separate the idea of disability allowances. These are allowances for the additional costs of being disabled. ESA is our only long-term sick benefit and often they are conflated. The problem with the WCA is that the Labour government of the time went to Unum and asked them how they as an insurance company dealt with disability. And there’s the mistake. They asked Unum the wrong question. What Unum is involved with, is getting people who have disabilities back into work, people who are employed, because their insurance is paid by the employer. Unum’s job is to reduce their own pay-outs; that’s how the model works. So they find ways of getting people who are “stable and able” back into the workplace. Unum at no point had in mind people who were too sick to work. And yet we used the suggestions from UNUM and applied them to Incapacity Benefit, which at the time was our only long-term UK sickness benefit. This is why the WCA reads like a test of functional ability and it doesn’t ask the question “Is this person too sick to work?”. It’s so ridiculous after all these years. Labour just need to add that question.”

“I understand the frustrations, but we’ve always had an assessment process in the welfare system. We can’t get away from that. But sickness needs to be separated again, because we’ve got to make people understand that some people are too sick to work. Some might be able to work in the future, with the right support. But for some people, even trying to get a care package is difficult.”

“Labour needs to say they will assess people in a way that’s fair, with dignity. You’re treated like you’re a criminal. One big thing that needs changing is the narrative about demonising claimants. If we don’t challenge that, we’re not going to get people being sympathetic.”

How can we support disabled people into work?

“The main problem here is the mental health problems created by the assessment process. And the mental health problems are directly linked to the fact that the assessments are not what they’re meant to be. If you’re going to decide whether someone’s too sick to work, you need to take account of their clinical condition. That means you can’t disregard diagnosis, prognosis, prior health conditions and the drugs that they’re given. Very often the drugs people are prescribed will tell you how ill they are. The WCA disregards clinical knowledge. They do not consider medical evidence.”

“Get rid of the WCA; it’s dangerous. It was always guaranteed to kill. Back in 2014, an unpublished NHS report identified that almost 50% of ESA claimants had attempted suicide. It needs to be replaced with an assessment led by clinicians. Chronically ill people should only need one assessment. They’re not going to get any better and persecuting them won’t help.”

“We need to define: is this permanent? Is the temporary? What is the anticipation of a recovery? None of that nuance is included in our current assessment. The very important thing is that we assess people in a real-world way. They are simple questions.”

“Employment Support Allowance is a sickness benefit reframed to sound positive when Incapacity Benefit was a more honest label. It’s about being distanced from the workplace. Why can we not just put it back in its right box?”

“We’ve got to make sure that people understand the impact of someone’s disability. Everybody gets shoved into a box that doesn’t fit. Previous evidence isn’t taken into account. You have to send the same stuff in time and time again. It’s a pointless waste of taxpayers’ money. The MR needs to be scrapped; it’s just an additional barrier stopping people getting to the right place. Let’s go straight to tribunal and have it sorted once and for all.”

“Digitising Access to Work is one step in the right direction. Filling in a form is difficult for some disabled people. And I wonder how much value the staff add. Would it be better for it to be decentralised so funding goes to the claimant and local organisations provide the support? Everything’s a battle, which wears people down. Even the tone of the letters they send out needs reviewing. By contrast, the Motability team are far more helpful and supportive. It’s totally the opposite.

“The old DWP Disability Employment Advisors worked better. This centralised processing is just so unhelpful. Local DPOs could be better placed to provide assessments.”

“The Beyond the Barriers report also suggested local organisations could carry out the assessments. Local people who know the local job market.”

“Disabled people are working really hard and tired of being disregarded as “having a whinge”. We know more about the system than any politician or civil servant. We need to have more disabled voices and lived experience at all levels to make a difference. We don’t have fair representation in Parliament.

“Beyond the Barriers suggested a participation payment: a reward for someone joining or volunteering with groups to help their mental health, which they would not usually attend due to financial barriers. Something that gives them structure and rewards them mentally and financially. Part of mental health is losing confidence in your ability to be out there, doing things.”

“Why don’t we encourage people to do things where they aren’t forced, they will enjoy them and they will benefit from them? The Tories have the stick and Labour should help people at the grassroots level.”

“Many housebound disabled people are facing bills greater than the £150 being offered by the Government. That needs to be upped as well. Some conditions are temperature sensitive.”