Mental Health: Access to Work Support Service

Lord Freud Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Thomas, as has everyone else, for raising this important issue. I am grateful for the important and thoughtful contributions from other noble Lords today. I have listened very closely, and I shall take the opportunity to outline how the Government are supporting disabled people into work, especially those with mental health conditions, and in particular how we are promoting the Access to Work service.

I assure noble Lords that I feel very strongly about this issue. Over the years there has been a huge change in how we think about mental health and work. Evidence shows that being in good work generally leads to improved outcomes for people with both mental and physical conditions. Returning to work often has a therapeutic effect. The workplace offers an important opportunity for people to build resilience and to develop social networks and their own mental capital. The Government aim to improve employment outcomes for people with poor mental health by supporting them to gain and sustain employment and to remain in suitable employment, and to ensure that they are treated equably in the operation of the reformed welfare benefits system.

We know that we need to do more. The employment rate for disabled people is just over 46%, compared with an employment rate for non-disabled people of around 76%. For people with mental health conditions, the employment rate is much worse at around 15%. This is a great loss, not least for employers. For example, people with autism—I accept that people with mental health conditions have something else, but this is related—can have exceptional talents and prove a tremendous asset to business. That is why we asked Liz Sayce to carry out a review of specialist employment support, and why we consulted on her recommendations that were published in June 2011. The responses to the consultation strongly supported the idea that money to support disabled people into employment should follow individuals, not institutions, and that government-funded segregated employment is not the way forward for disabled people.

Liz Sayce’s report recommended that Access to Work be expanded so that it can support more people. She suggested measures such as opening it up to internships and making it easier through, for example, an internet portal. On 7 March we published our response, in which we repeated our commitment to protecting the £320 million budget for specialist employment support but to spending it more effectively so that it could support thousands more disabled people into work. In answer to the question from the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, there is a £15 million increase in Access to Work to help an additional 8,000 people, along with other efficiencies.

We announced in our response that we would accept all the recommendations on Access to Work and that we would work with disabled people to get these right. In particular, we announced the extra £15 million, and we will also recycle money freed from Remploy into Access to Work and other programmes to enable more disabled people to meet their aspirations and remain in work.

My noble friend Lord German asked what I would consider an additional measure of success in 12 months. It basically comes down to an increase in the number of people with mental health issues using the service. As we have sorted out, slightly under the carpet, 2%, even if that is more than 0.2%, is simply not enough.

Over the next 12 months, we will deliver a rolling campaign to build up a strong profile internally and externally with the aim of increasing the take-up from underrepresented groups. In particular we will build operational awareness of the Mental Health Support service. This service was established to allow Access to Work to meet the longer-term objectives of increasing the numbers of customers with mental health issues who gain assistance from the programme. The contract began in December 2011 and is due to run for three years. It offers additional support for individuals with a mental health condition.

In answer to the question from my noble friend Lord German on how it supports individuals, work-focused mental health support will be tailored to the individual. The other types of support that it offers include assessment of an individual’s needs to identify coping strategies; a personalised support plan detailing the steps needed to enter, remain in or return to work; suggestions for reasonable adjustments in the workplace or in working practices; advice and guidance to enable employers to understand mental ill health fully and how to support employees with mental health conditions; and signposting to other external support services and networks.

My noble friend Lady Browning asked about multiple diagnoses. Yes, that is part of this service as long as mental health is a factor in the need for support.

My noble friend Lord German asked whether the focus is on mental health or people with learning difficulties. It is on mental health.

Alongside this we will look at how we can inject more expertise in mental health into the employment support offered by the department. On the Work Programme, which is our biggest welfare-to-work programme, all providers have pledged to develop their expertise to support people with mental-health conditions to find, enter and remain in employment.

In response to the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, each Jobcentre Plus district has a mental health and well-being partnership manager. We are also looking carefully at how best to bolster the knowledge and confidence that Jobcentre Plus staff have about mental health, including close working with primary care trust mental health counsellors to enable the fast-tracking of customers for counselling.

The Government are considering their response to the health at work review—an independent review of sickness absence—which makes recommendations to help people who can work stay attached to the labour market through periods of ill health, while ensuring those too sick to work receive support quickly.

The review recognises that mental health in the workplace is poorly understood by employers and the public and that much needs to be done to eliminate the stigma. It makes a number of recommendations, including the establishment of a state-funded independent assessment service. The Government are considering their response to the report and will make an announcement in November. My own ambition for this response is that we take advantage of it as a key vehicle to expand medical capacity, particularly in the area of mental health, where capacity is scarce, and to provide support for people who work for smaller companies. I do not think that they will ever get the kind of support that a company such as BT offers, because BT is an extraordinary exemplar in this area. However, we can pull them a long way from the complete lack of support that happens to too many people in that area.

To close, I shall answer one of the questions asked by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, but I shall have to write about the others as there were too many for me to deal with in such a short time. The IAPT programme is being rolled out across England by March 2015.

I again thank the noble Baroness for raising this issue. It is critical because roughly 40% of people who end up in that state or who are on sickness absence have a mental health issue. To get our strategies right for people, we need to get our mental health strategies right.