Local MP Welcomes Increase In Individual Tailored Employment Support For Disabled People

North Swindon MP and former Minister for Disabled People, Justin Tomlinson, has highlighted the importance of tailored employment support for disabled people and people with a long-term health conditions during two debates in Parliament.

One key advantage of the full roll-out of universal credit is that every claimant will have a personal, named coach who will stay with them. The job of the coach is not only to help people to get into work, but to navigate all the challenges they face when dealing with complex benefits. If the system does not support claimants in the way it should, the coach will help them to address that. 

These coaches will also signpost where training is available to enhance people’s hopes of getting into work or progressing in work. Obviously, the traditional job-searching work will be done and, for the first time, these coaches will also provide support for people as they go into work. Many people coming off ESA will go into relatively or very low-paid work and will not necessarily have the confidence or skills to push themselves forward to get roles with higher wages. To counter this, the coaches will keep in touch with those people and support them to increase their hours and salary.

Crucially, for people with fluctuating health conditions the benefit is in real time, so if people can work fewer hours one week than another, they will have a minimum ​income. The process goes from there, so if they do more hours, the income increases. This system removes the 16-hour cliff edge that was preventing people from benefiting.

Justin also took the opportunity to set out many of the positive recommendations announced in the recent Work, Health & Disability Green Paper, which has received cross-party support, as well as support from charities and key disability stakeholder groups. The Green Paper includes proposals for more personalised and tailored support, as well as quicker assessments. This is particularly important as 50% of people on ESA have a mental health condition, but typically wait nine months for an assessment. The Green Paper will address that by making sure that people are assessed quickly and given support before they navigate often difficult personal challenges when they take the step back into work.​

There will be a place on the work and health programme or Work Choice for those who wish to take it. Furthermore there will be additional places on the very popular specialist employment support programme. There will be job clubs run by peers—people with disabilities who have gone through the system and overcome their fear at the thought of going back into the process. That is often a big fear for people who have been out of work for a long time. There will be 200 new community partners; again, this is about utilising disability expertise. There will be increased access to work for young people with mental health conditions. There are further opportunities through the Disability Confident campaign.

In addition to this support, the Government have introduced the national living wage, which has helped 2.75 million of our lowest earners, and it will rise to more than £9 an hour by 2020. We have increased the personal allowance from £6,495 to £11,000, taking the lowest 3.2 million earners out of paying any income tax. Additionally we have had the strongest economic growth of any developed economy, which is delivering record employment, with the most recent figures showing another 461,000 people entering work. Furthermore we have also seen 590,000 more disabled people in work in the past three years—an increase of about 4%—although there is still much further to go.

During his time as the Minister for Disabled People, Justin increased funding for the Access to Work scheme which assists individuals and companies to make small changes to a working environment in order to support people with a disability, expanded the role of work coaches to offer tailored advice to disabled peopled beyond their entry into the labour market, as well as hugely expanding the Disability Confident campaign.

Justin Tomlinson MP said: “It is vital that the health and welfare systems support those who will never be able to work but they should offer the opportunity of work to all those who can, provide help for those who could, and care for those who cannot. As part of our reforms of ESA and Universal Credit, we are rightly expanding the individual, tailored support available to people with a disability or long-term health condition. The proposals in the Green Paper compliment the work I did as the Minister for Disabled People to expand the tailored support and opportunities available to disabled people who can work and want to, to start work, progress and succeed”.


You can watch these speeches, and all of Justin's contributions in Parliament via https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuzyuOQO3cqzecNUBaIER2A