“Sto vivendo settimana per settimana”: DWP tagli allo schema di lavoro lasciando disoccupati i disabili
‘I’m living week-to-week’: DWP cuts to job scheme leaving disabled people unemployed
di fantasy53
“Sto vivendo settimana per settimana”: DWP tagli allo schema di lavoro lasciando disoccupati i disabili
‘I’m living week-to-week’: DWP cuts to job scheme leaving disabled people unemployed
di fantasy53
3 commenti
Imagine that you’re an employer interviewing for role and you have a choice between two candidates, one of whom will require significant reasonable adjustments to be successful in the role.
The candidate tells you that they will be getting those adjustments funded by access to work, but that this could take anywhere from six months to a year for the funding to come through.
Would you be able to hire that person and pay them for up to a year without getting any work out of them, for most businesses The answer is no and that’s the impossible position that Disabled people find themselves in.
Their constantly told that they need to be economically active and contribute to the state but the very support that would allow them to do that is not accessible to them and they’re competing with others who don’t share the same barriers.
>An award, which is capped at £69,000 a year per person, can pay for support workers, specialist equipment, travel costs or therapy to manage mental health issues.
>The number of people using the scheme rose from 36,000 in 2019-20 to 68,000 last year, official figures show. Annual costs have increased from £142m to £258m during the same period.
>The backlog has also grown, from around 15,000 in 2021 to around 62,000 now, according to figures obtained through a Freedom of Information request.
>Disability minister Sir Stephen Timms has said the growth was “unlikely to be sustainable”.
At ~£3800 per person, adding the backlog of 62 000 would put the cost at £500 million.
>Sharon Farley-Mason has struggled financially since losing her Access to Work award last year. The 57-year-old from Wigan had been selling personalised walking sticks, crutches and canes online.
>She has fibromyalgia and PTSD after a horse-riding accident, and was struggling with fatigue and brain fog, so relied on a support worker to help her box up products and carry out clerical tasks.
>Ms Farley-Mason said her Access to Work money –- worth around £42,000 a year in support worker costs -– stopped in July 2024.
~£42k (x11 the average claimant) a year in costs for a support worker to box up products and do clerical tasks to support her private business. Ridiculous. These sort of examples don’t exactly make you sympathetic.
It sounds like a great scheme overall, and the average cost per claimant is pretty low. People like Ms Farley-Mason make the scheme look ridiculous. Hopefully she isn’t able to abuse it again. The upper limit should be lowered from 69k to 20k.
I’m not sure where I sit on this one.
My understanding of the grant is that it is to help disabled people to work so for example if they required equipment or help with travel costs. This would then be paid to people working who would otherwise not receive benefits.
We find that the reality is that it’s used as in the examples to employ full time staff. If your business needs a full time staff member paid for then it’s not a viable business and £42,000 for someone to pack orders is way over the top. The other example is interpreters which I find strange. Why can she not learn the language (sign or otherwise)? Why are they paying an ongoing cost for that? If they paid for the learning costs that wouldn’t be an issue.
It just seems to me the system is not being used in the way it was designed. The 4x backlog and 2x claims on face view looks like people have learnt to game the system. Regardless none if this is fair on the people that actually need it for the right reasons.