• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • About DNS
  • Subscribe to DNS
  • Advertise with DNS
  • Support DNS
  • Contact DNS

Disability News Service

the country's only news agency specialising in disability issues

  • Home
  • Independent Living
    • Arts, Culture and Sport
    • Crime
    • Education
    • Employment
    • Housing
    • Transport
  • Activism & Campaigning
  • Benefits & Poverty
  • Politics
  • Human Rights
You are here: Home / News Archive / DWP reports suggest Work Programme has failed disabled people

DWP reports suggest Work Programme has failed disabled people

By John Pring on 29th November 2012 Category: News Archive

Listen

Major questions have been raised over the government’s plans to support disabled people into work, after two long-awaited reports showed only about 1, 000 claimants of disability benefits found work through the scheme in its first year.

The first Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) report shows that about 79 000 ESA claimants passed through the Work Programme between its launch in June 2011 and July this year, giving a success rate of just over one per cent.

To be counted in the figures, a disabled benefits claimant needed to stay in a job for only three months, compared with six months for non-disabled job-seekers.

The success rate is slightly higher for former incapacity benefit claimants who had been assessed and found “fit for work”, with just over two per cent of them finding work for at least three months.

The overall figures – which include non-disabled job-seekers – show about 3.5 per cent of those on the scheme found some work.

Margaret Hodge, the Labour MP and chair of the Commons public accounts committee, described the overall figures as “shocking” and said the Work Programme – which is aimed at jobseekers who are long-term unemployed or at risk of becoming long-term unemployed – was “falling woefully short of expectations”.

The second DWP report provides possible explanations for the low number of disabled people helped into work, and suggests that the government has underestimated the significant barriers to work faced by many of those forced onto the programme, including those on employment and support allowance (ESA), the new out-of-work disability benefit.

The report suggests that the Work Programme has failed to help many of those with the most significant barriers, such as people with mental health conditions.

Some Work Programme advisers told researchers that the scheme’s model of “conditionality” and “sanctioning” had proved to be “not appropriate for individuals with the most significant and complex barriers to employment”.

They reported that some of these participants were “almost unable” to avoid being sanctioned – having their benefits withdrawn for increasing periods of time – because they could not comply with the conditions they had to meet.

The report also suggests that the main Work Programme contractors – most of which are from the private sector – have been overwhelmed by the large numbers of people they are dealing with, and instead of giving those with higher support needs more attention, have given them less, while there has been a lack of funding to address the barriers these clients face.

The Work Programme was designed to deal with this problem by offering higher payments to contractors who found jobs for those who were furthest away from the job market, such as disabled people claiming ESA.

But despite these higher payments, contractors appear instead to have prioritised those who were more “job ready”.

Steve Harry, an employment adviser and a board member of Disability Cornwall, who has 15 years’ experience of helping disabled people into work, said he was not surprised by the conclusions of the two reports.

He said he believed the Work Programme was doomed to fail disabled people and other job-seekers.

Harry said the payment-by-results model meant providers focused on how cheaply they could deliver support and “getting results and getting job outcomes as quickly as possible”.

He said: “The Work Programme does an awful lot if what you need is a CV and how to apply for jobs. If you need more than that it doesn’t really meet your needs.”

He added: “It is not really a serious attempt to help people with significant disabilities back into work.”

A spokesman for the Employment Related Services Association (ERSA), the trade body for the welfare-to-work industry, said: “The industry does accept that the performance [in finding work] for people on ESA is behind par and more must be done to help these job-seekers find sustainable employment.”

29 November 2012

Share this post:

Share on TwitterShare on FacebookShare on WhatsAppShare on Reddit

Related

‘Muddled’ blue badge reforms ‘are to blame for renewal delays’
6th February 2015
UN debate will be reminder of true inclusive education
6th February 2015
IDS breaks pledge on PIP waiting-times, as tens of thousands still queue for months
30th January 2015

Primary Sidebar

Access

Latest Stories

Government questioned over ‘unforgivable’ failures on vaccine priority

Regulator fails to record key details from scheme sending COVID patients into care homes

‘Why did it take disabled man’s death to lead to rail safety action?’ campaigners ask

Ministers silent after sitting on report on discrimination in politics for more than a year

Claim that government reduced the disability employment gap is wrong, experts tell MPs

Two flagship DWP disability jobs schemes slated in front of MPs

Government’s 2016 welfare reforms ‘had devastating impact on disabled people’

ONS suggests NHS disability discrimination may have increased risk of COVID deaths

DWP records ‘show Tomlinson is either a liar or a fantasist’ over engagement claims

Audio recording option set to be introduced for all PIP assessments, says DWP

Advice and Information

DWP: The case for the prosecution

Readspeaker

Footer

The International Standard Serial Number for Disability News Service is: ISSN 2398-8924

  • Accessibility Statement
  • Privacy Policy
  • Site map
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2021 Disability News Service

Site development by A Bright Clear Web