Employment: Disability

Question

This Government is committed to improving the lives of disabled people and delivering the most ambitious disability reform agenda in a generation.

A range of initiatives are supporting disabled people to stay in and enter work. These include the Work and Health Programme, Intensive Personalised Employment Support, Access to Work, Disability Confident and initiatives in partnership with the health system, including Employment Advice in NHS Improving Access to Psychological Therapy services and Individual Placement and Support. In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, we have provided specialist employment support remotely and made programmes easier to access.

In 2017, we set a goal to see one million more disabled people in work by 2027. In the first three years of the goal, between 2017 and 2020, the number of disabled people in employment increased by 800,000.

The Department is bringing forward a Green Paper on health and disability support. The Green Paper will consider how we improve our current service so it’s better and easier to use, explore how we provide extra support to navigate the system, and understand how we improve our employment support offer.

Later this year we intend to publish our response to the 2019 consultation ‘Health is Everyone's Business proposals to reduce ill-health related job loss’ in which the Government consulted on ways to support and encourage employers to minimise the risk of ill-health related job loss among their employees.

Additionally, the Government plans to publish a National Strategy for Disabled People in this year to ensure that all disabled people can play a full role in society. The strategy will take into account the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on disabled people with focus on the issues that affect them the most.