1. Citizens Advice is the national body for Citizens Advice Bureaux (CABx) in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The CAB service is the largest independent network of free advice centres in Europe, with 430 main bureaux in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Bureaux provide advice from over 3,300 outlets, including bureaux in the high street, community centres, health settings, courts and prisons. All CABx are registered charities.
2. The CAB service has twin aims: to ensure that individuals do not suffer through a lack of information about their rights; and equally to exercise a responsible influence on the development of policies and practices, both at a local and national level.
3. In 2006/07 Citizens Advice in England and Wales helped 2 million people to solve 5.7 million new problems. Of these almost 450,000 were disability and incapacity benefit problems, 2,500 were about employment discrimination on the grounds of disability, including mental health, and almost 500 were about New Deal schemes.
4. Introduction
4.1. Citizens Advice welcomes this opportunity to respond to this consultation on Improving Specialist Disability Employment Services. Specialist disability employment services should play a key role in helping disabled people to enter, remain in and return to paid employment. Citizens Advice has been broadly supportive of the Government’s Welfare Reform agenda. With the right advice and individual support, and appropriate employment opportunities, many disabled people want to, and are able to, enter, remain in, and return to, paid work.
4.2. There has been a plethora of announcements, reviews and consultation documents issued by DWP. They are all pieces of a much bigger jigsaw. We fully support the recommendation of the Work and Pensions Select Committee for a Welfare Commission1 to take a strategic look at the totality of the UK’s welfare system.
5. The consultation document
5.1. We believe that it is crucial that a consultation such as this should refer explicitly to the need for disability employment services to be sensitive to the needs and experiences of people from diverse backgrounds, ensuring that ‘hard to reach’ communities are aware of the services on offer, and specialist advisers know how to access and use interpreters, for example.
6. The work environment and role of employers
6.1. Employers have a central role to play in these reforms, and in supporting people to secure and retain work. We are disappointed that engagement with employers is still missing from the welfare reform agenda, and believe that this lack of real involvement threatens the whole agenda.
6.2. Disabled people continue to experience high levels of discrimination in the workplace. In 2005, the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development found that 33.1% of CIPD members excluded people with a history of long-term sickness or incapacity, even though such a policy would almost certainly leave employers very exposed should a disappointed applicant use the Disability Discrimination Act against them.2 No matter how ‘work-ready’ or close to the labour market a disabled person may be, or may be helped to become, they will not be able to move into work if employers remain reluctant to employ them.
6.2. Given this, and the pivotal role work plays in people’s well being, or social exclusion, it is vital that the DWP’s collaborative work with the Department of Health, employers and the Health and Safety Commission results in a better experience of the workplace for disabled people.
7. Question 2: Specialist services for those who need them most
7.1. It is not clear from the consultation document how the proposed programme fits with other disability employment programmes such as Pathways to Work, the Employment and Support Allowance, New Deal for Disabled People, City Strategies etc. Our understanding is that the new programme will be available to people with more severe disabilities whose needs are not being met through mainstream programmes, or who have spent a certain amount of time on a Pathways to Work programme and have not moved into employment. A better understanding of who is expected to use these programmes would help us to respond more fully to this consultation.
7.2. Citizens Advice supports the proposition that support provided through specialist services should be concentrated on those who need it most. We would, however, be concerned if this resulted in mainstream services ‘dumping’ disabled clients who may be perceived as being harder to help.
7.3. As the TUC and other organisations have noted, the key question is whether mainstream services will, in fact, be made more accessible. We suspect that the Department lacks the resources to make mainstream services fully accessible to disabled people with less severe impairments. We are concerned that this group of people may fall between specialist and mainstream services, and effectively be unable to access employment support at all.
7.4. Citizens Advice urges the DWP to keep the Disability Equality Duty - imposed on public authorities in carrying out their functions - in mind. This requires that public bodies promote equality of opportunity between disabled people and others. The DWP will need to devise and publish, within its’ Disability Equality Scheme, the measure of the success of such mainstreaming for all disabled people, and also the success of the proposed changes.
Integrated, flexible support
8. Question 4: preventing providers ‘cherry picking’ those easiest to place
8.1. Citizens Advice believes that this issue is key to the likely success of all the current welfare reforms, and has yet to be sufficiently addressed. Personal advisers in the Pathways to Work pilots reported worrying tensions between the perceived need to support clients, irrespective of the final outcome, and targets for getting incapacity benefit recipients into work.3 The personal adviser research suggests that there is, indeed, a danger that increasing the weight placed on early job targets in the future might lead them to focus on ‘quick wins’ rather than those who really benefit from the pilots. Reported rates of progression, particularly for those considered to be ‘furthest from the labour market’, appeared to differ between individual personal advisers. In particular, there are variations in the extent to which personal advisers have been willing to persist with more ‘difficult’ customers, and feel they have the skills, ability and ‘permission’ from managers to do so.4
8.2. It is vital that all disabled people have the opportunity to access employment programmes, where appropriate, and that providers deliver a sensitive and personalised approach to all. Targets must be set that measure and reward ‘the distance travelled’ by disabled people who may be some way from the labour market, as well as job entry and retention. There must also be a recognition that getting into a job may, for some people, be an unrealistic possibility, especially where there are limited jobs in a locality.
8.3. The DWP will need to implement effective monitoring processes and appropriate management data collection. Analysis against figures for impairment-specific conditions will be necessary, together with suitable mechanisms for feedback from disabled people where they experience poor service or are denied access to a service at all.
9. Question 5: the transitional supported employment element
9.1. Citizens Advice believes that it is appropriate that people are helped to move into unsupported work from the transitional supported employment element of the programme, where they are able to do so. Safeguards will need to ensure that people are not pressurised into leaving the provision, but receive support well into the workplace, to address emerging issues quickly. A person returning to work is likely to find their income fluctuating over the next two years, as tax credits and the various back-to-work and in-work credits kick in (and out again). Access to advice and information services will be vital if these fluctuations are not to precipitate employment breaking down.
9.2. It will also be necessary to ensure that there is flexibility for people to move from the transitional element to the longer-term element if their condition changes, and if their needs suggest that participation in this element would be more helpful and appropriate.
10. Question 6: the longer-term supported employment element
10.1. Citizens Advice agrees that entry into mainstream employment should not be the primary focus for the longer-term element of the programme. For many disabled people, a regular and systematic regime of supported employment can pay significant dividends in terms of maintaining health and social interactions. These softer outcomes must not be overshadowed by the underlying drive of work for all that underpins current strategies. Again, ensuring that accessible and appropriate advice and information is available to people on these programmes will be a key element in managing this strand of the programme.
11. Question 8: Better off in work?
11.1. CAB advice work shows that, in practice, moving from out of work benefits into paid work can be an extremely difficult decision. Many people currently receiving a very low income from benefits would prefer to work if they could find employment that paid enough to leave benefits. If the Government is serious about empowering people to work, it needs to look very closely at the current structure of earnings disregards, benefit tapers, linking rules and run-on arrangements, to ensure that as many disincentives as possible are removed from the system. Access to independent advice, in advance, about whether disabled people and their families will actually be financially ‘better off’ in work, and how to maximise their income at this time, is a crucial component of any programme helping people into work.
The Disability Employment Adviser role
12. Personal Advisers play an important role in advising and assisting claimants to take up opportunities for training programmes or to return direct to work. In comparison with the volumes of evidence we receive on benefit problems, we receive relatively little evidence about claimants’ experiences of employment and training schemes and personal advisers. Our evidence fits broadly into two categories: benefit problems resulting from changes in benefit status when moving on and off specific training programmes and in and out of work; and inappropriate use of discretion in encouraging or pressurising claimants to take up employment or training opportunities unsuitable for the claimant’s needs. A bad experience can have a serious impact on a claimant’s confidence to return to work in the longer term.
A man started work at a local petrol station through the New Deal for Disabled People. He told the CAB that his personal adviser had wrongly informed him that his job would not affect his benefits. When he started working 40 hours per week, his personal adviser had not passed the information on to the benefits section at Jobcentre Plus, resulting in an overpayment of income support. As this was a result of official error he did not have to pay it back. He was also still receiving severe disability allowance although working full time. The client’s mother stated that the personal adviser specifically advised her that that he could carry on claiming it.
12.1. The role of the personal adviser is to provide “individually tailored support” to clients to support them into work. The best support will take account of the claimants’ skills, abilities and interests.
12.2. Training and employment courses can provide an essential stepping-stone into work, filling skills gaps and providing an important source of confidence and self-esteem. Poor quality training that is poorly suited to the individual serves to reinforce frustration, decrease enthusiasm and increase financial hardship when sanctions result from non-compliance.
A man with a background of skilled employment wrote to us about his disappointment that he and other colleagues experienced with a Jobcentre Plus commissioned course. Following a period of unemployment and incapacity brought about by back strain, he was told he need to go on a course or risk loss of his benefits. He had reluctantly agreed to go on the course but did not feel that it would be appropriate to his needs. Participants had very diverse backgrounds and problems and he found the first week too general to be helpful. He described the lectures on the importance of honesty in the workplace as offensive, the conditions as cramped and supervisers as overstretched and unsympathetic to individual needs. Work placement options were limited. After getting no response to his first application he was told he’d have to get his experience working in a charity shop.
A man with learning difficulties was put on the New Deal programme. He was unable to complete his training as he found it too difficult to cope with the computer. As a result his benefits were stopped and he had not received any for several months. The experience knocked his confidence about returning to work or training again.
13. Question 15 – referrals from Jobcentre Plus Disability Employment Advisers
13.1. It is difficult to respond fully to this question given the lack of clarity about exactly who will be eligible for these programmes. However, it is clear that the role of the Disability Employment Adviser will be pivotal to the success of the programmes. The DEA will need to be sufficiently well trained to accurately assess which elements of the programme an individual can access, and to be able to develop the high level action plans and identify key goals and support outlined in the consultation document. Sufficiently resourced, a DEA will be in a good position to co-ordinate support in partnership with social services, education and training programmes, where appropriate.
13.2. At the very least, we believe that there should be at least one fully-trained, appropriately resourced Disability Employment Adviser in every Jobcentre Plus office, and more if their caseload demands it.
14. Question 16 – Disability Employment Advisers and feedback on support from external providers
14.1. If provision is to be delivered by external partners, it will be important that people are able to provide feedback on the quality of that provision. Jobcentre Plus will retain responsibility and accountability for the quality of external provision and the DEA should act as a link between the disabled person, Jobcentre Plus and those external providers. Citizens Advice Bureaux could play a role in publicising this opportunity to clients.
15. Question 17 – Service provided by Disability Employment Advisers
15.1. We are concerned that the quality of service disabled people receive from Disability Employment Advisers varies across the country, depending on the level of training, resources and workload of individual advisers.
A mentally-ill client of a CAB in Lincolnshire was wrongly advised by her DEA to claim income support, even though it should have been clear that she would not be entitled to it. She had been getting IB for seven years after leaving the police force following a number of assaults. Her IB was stopped after she failed a PCA, and she was referred to a DEA. The client had an income of over £1,000 per month, and capital of £10,000 – more than enough to make her ineligible for income support.
A London CAB’s client reported that he had been discriminated against by his DEA because he was profoundly deaf and could only communicate with other people through an interpreter or by writing questions and answers on paper. His mother reported, on his behalf, that the DEA had said that he couldn’t be put on the register for the Disability Jobs Scheme because he might not turn up for interviews, even if they had arranged for a sign language interpreter. The DEA allegedly told them that Jobcentre Plus staff were weighting the cost of sign language interpreters, if they needed to engage them on a client’s behalf. The client had good transferable IT skills, had been actively seeking work, and was desperate to get a job, but felt that he hadn’t received the necessary support from Jobcentre Plus. As a result, the client had become increasingly depressed about his inability to get a job, and the unnecessary financial burden on his family.
A client of a Buckinghamshire bureau was told that the Disability Employment Adviser was “so busy that she was unlikely to get to see her”, when she tried to make a claim for Jobseekers Allowance. The client had Down’s Syndrome and was worried that she wouldn’t be able to turn down unsuitable jobs without the support of a DEA.
Access to Work
16. The Access to Work scheme is very popular with those disabled people who use it, but is little known by employers or other disabled people. The scheme needs better promotion, to ensure that both employers and employees are aware of the financial help that is available to pay for adaptations and additional costs. The Royal National Institute for the Blind has calculated that every £1 spent on Access to Work brings in £1.70 to the Treasury, in terms of income from tax and national insurance. On this basis, we would press hard for Government to take this opportunity to increase spending on Access to Work.
17. Question 20 – using Access to Work more effectively
17.1. The consultation document recognises that timeliness of Access to Work provision is a major problem. There is currently an unacceptable delay in assessments and/or the provision of equipment. Disabled people, providers of specialist employment services and employers need to be confident that the necessary aids and adaptations will be in place in order for them to start working on their first day of employment.
17.2. For many people, their needs are likely to be similar across a number of workplaces. It should be possible for an assessment to be made of a person’s likely adaptation/equipment needs whilst they are looking for a job, so that a disabled person can take an appropriate package with them into the workplace, which could then be modified as that particular job demands. At the very least, it must be possible for Access to Work assessments to be completed before the job starts.
18. Question 21 – consistency of decision-making vs. local flexibility
18.1. Citizens Advice would like to see the introduction of standard processing times for securing assessment and support from Access to Work. This would help to address the issue of timeliness.
19. Question 22 – Access to Work and the Disability Discrimination Act
19.1. Employers must have clear information about what constitutes reasonable adjustments under the Disability Discrimination Act, and support to implement these. Many small employers believe, often wrongly, that the costs of employing a disabled person will be prohibitively expensive. Employers need to have a better understanding about what support is available from Access to Work and how to access this. It is also vital to emphasise that Access to Work shouldn’t be restricted to filling the gaps in employer’s duties under the DDA.
20. Question 23 – employer contributions to Access to Work
20.1. Citizens Advice is concerned that increasing employer contributions risks penalising those employers who do employ disabled people, rather than sharing the cost amongst all employers and society at large. We would be concerned if increase costs were to lead to fewer disabled people being employed. This might be less of a concern if there was a radical shift in employer attitudes to employing disabled people but, given the current reluctance amongst employers, we would be concerned that increased contributions would simply result in even lower employment rates amongst disabled people.
21. Question 25 – Access to Work and public sector organisations
21.1. In principle, the public sector should be taking the lead in employment policy and practice with regard to employing disabled people. However, in a tight financial climate, it is difficult to see where local authorities and other bodies will find the necessary resources. We would be very concerned if an expectation that public bodies would carry 100 per cent of the cost of equipment/adaptations led to a reduction in the numbers of disabled people being employed.
21.2. The apparent reduction in the numbers of disabled people working within the DWP, both in actual numbers and as a percentage, causes concern. It will be necessary to evaluate the total number of disabled people being employed, not simply the number of assessments or adjustments made, or the amount of money spent on them, as not all disabilities require physical adaptations to be made and not all adaptations or adjustments cost money.
Social Policy contact: Vicky Pearlman Vicky Pearlman
1. Work and Pensions Select Committee (2007) Benefits Simplification
2. CIPD (Summer/Autumn 2005) Labour Market Outlook
3. DWP (2005) Incapacity Benefit Reforms: the personal adviser role and practices, Stage 2
4. DWP (2004) Incapacity Benefit Reforms: the personal adviser role and practices
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