16. The government has invested heavily in helping people with health conditions and disabilities to find work. Pathways to Workis designed to transform work opportunities for people making a claim for Incapacity Benefit. It has been piloted in three areas since October 2003, and a further four areas since April 2004.
17. In addition to Pathways to Worksupport for new Incapacity Benefit claimants, new measures for people who have been claiming IB for up to two yearswere proposed in Budget 2004, and will be piloted from 2005 in Pathways to Workareas. These include mandatory work-focused
interviews, and a job preparation premium of £20 for existing IB claimants undertaking relevant work-related activity.
Pathways to Work
Key features of Pathways to Workinclude:
● A new team of skilled personal adviserswithin Jobcentre Plus focusing solely on
Incapacity Benefit clients and trained in health/disability awareness, influencing and motivating clients.
● Six mandatory monthly work-focused meetingsfor most new IB clients to discuss
work options (including support to help return to work), explain IB rules and medical tests, and develop an action plan. Personal advisers have discretion to delay repeat IB reviews where an individual is starting to look for work.
● A voluntary ‘Choices’ package, combining existing provision (described below) and new
Condition Management Programmes delivered jointly between Jobcentre Plus and the NHS. These are cognitive education programmes that aim to help clients understand and better manage their condition in a work environment so that they are more confident about returning to work and negotiating with their employer about their needs. The programmes are being designed and commissioned by primary care trusts in the pilot areas.
● Financial incentives, including a Return to Work credit of £40 per week, and
access to theAdvisers’ Discretion Fund.
BEAT – Action Teams for Jobs, Bodmin, Cornwall
BEAT is part of Jobcentre Plus. It employs two full-time members of staff and has a joint caseload of 132 people. It uses community outreach to try to change community perceptions of Jobcentre Plus and the support it can offer. Through BEAT, clients also have access to a debt counsellor once a month, a housing advice officer, and staff at St Petrocs, a local charity and hostel that works with homeless people, once a week. It has funding to provide flexible support to meet individual needs – team members can authorise purchases up to £300 or put a business case to head office for higher amounts.
The team spends one day a week at Bodmin psychiatric hospital, to discuss people’s options when they leave hospital, and help make the transition less intimidating. The team is also part of a more general community outreach service, which provides advice weekly on housing benefits, pensions and adult education in Bodmin town centre.
18. Pathways to Workwill incorporate existing Jobcentre Plus initiatives to promote employment for disabled people. These include:
● a work-focused interviewfor new Incapacity Benefit claimants in all Jobcentre Plus offices;
● 600 Disability Employment Adviserswithin Jobcentre Plus offering additional support to
people with disabilities;
● WORKSTEP, which offers job support to disabled people with complex work-related barriers.
It provides opportunities to work in a supportive environment and progress to mainstream employment. Providers aim to influence employers’ perceptions of employing disabled people;
● the New Deal for Disabled People, which offers support for people on incapacity benefits
to move into work through a network of job brokers. Tailored help includes a personal back to work plan, help in effective job search skills, and in-work support where needed for up to 26 weeks after starting a job; and
● Access to Work, which provides individually tailored support to remove disability-related
barriers that would otherwise prevent take up or continuation of work. An estimated 5 per cent of Access to Work clients have mental health problems, the fourth largest group of claimants.274
19. In May 2004, the Department for Work and Pensions published a preliminary paper, Building on
New Deal: Local solutions meeting individual needs.275The paper outlines a strategy to build on the
success of the New Deal, strengthening its ability to help Jobcentre Plus clients facing particular difficulties moving into employment and simplifying its administration. It will offer a more personalised approach, with personal advisers and local managers having sufficient flexibility to deliver solutions appropriate for individuals and local labour markets. The full paper will be published shortly.
20. Jobcentre Plus’s employer engagement strategyaims to develop a better understanding of, and focus on employers’ needs, to encourage more employers to use Jobcentre Plus and provide a greater range of employment opportunities for clients.
Enable project, Shropshire
The Enable Disability Employment Team, part of Shropshire’s mental health services, is funded by Shropshire County Council and the Shropshire Primary Care NHS Trust, and has a
WORKSTEP contract with Jobcentre Plus. It can provide higher levels of support to people with severe and enduring mental health problems over a longer time period than is usual for WORKSTEP. It acts as a bridge between health and social care clinical teams and Jobcentre Plus, so that health and social care, through Enable, can provide ongoing support once people have left WORKSTEP.
The team provides advice, guidance and support to jobseekers and employers. Its mental health job retention service provides a mediation and advice service between employees with mental health problems and their employers. Between June 2002 and May 2004, Enable helped 132 people into paid work, 63 into voluntary work, 48 into education and training and had 101 successful job retention outcomes.
21. At present, Jobcentre Plus programmes are not always able to meet the particular needs of people with mental health problems. For example, WORKSTEP requires people to work for 16 or more hours per week, and Access to Work requires a stable health condition, both of which may rule out people with mental health problems. The Department for Work and Pensions is considering greater tailoring of provision to meet individual needs, which should help meet the needs of this client group more effectively.
The business case for employing people with mental health problems
“Companies that do not embrace diversity, including disability, as a core business issue, are simply missing the point.”
(Sir Peter Bonfield, Chief Executive, BT plc)276
“To support our staff when mental health goes wrong means that we support them in the whole of their lives, which in turn means we get the best out of them at work.”
(Annie Ralph, Chief Executive, Braintree District Council)277
● Mental health problems affect up to one in six adults at any one time. No employer can afford to ignore such a large group of potential employees. People with mental health problems have a range of skills and talents that can fill gaps in the labour market.
● Many adults develop mental health problems during their careers. Enabling people to stay in work makes much better business sense than paying for medical retirement and
recruiting new staff. The typical additional costs of ill health retirement and replacement recruitment in the public sector are around £100,000.278
● People with mental health problems are keen to work and are committed employees. For example, adults with mental health problems employed by South West London and St George’s Mental Health Trust have lower sickness absence rates than the Trust’s workforce as a whole (3.8 per cent, compared to 5.8 per cent across the Trust as a whole).279
● Workplace adjustments are likely to be straightforward, such as flexibility in working hours (as for lone parents), and are typically very low cost – US research found that 90 per cent cost less than $100.280
● Employers have legal duties under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 not to discriminate against disabled employees and job applicants, including people whose mental health problems results in them being disabled.
● Good management practices will also help prevent and reduce the impact of mental health problems developing among other employees, and minimise sickness absence.