Asked by: Pippa Heylings (Liberal Democrat - South Cambridgeshire)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what guidance her Department issues to Disability Living Allowance claimants during the wait for their claim to be assessed; and what steps she is taking to reduce waiting times.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Disability Living Allowance (DLA) for Children is the only DLA product that has new claims. There are no longer new claims for DLA Adult, as customers over 16 are invited to claim Personal Independence Payment (PIP), and customers over the state pensions age are invited to claim Attendance Allowance (AA), rather than the DLA 65+.
At present, for Disability Living Allowance for Children, once a claim has been registered a system generated letter is sent to the customer to advise that the claim is being looked at with an approximate time frame, a progress acknowledgement letter may be sent at 7 weeks for new claims if the claim has not had a decision at that point.
Special Rules End of Life claims are dealt with as a priority and the above does not apply as these are expected to be decided within 10 days.
Telephony agents are also kept up to date for any telephony enquiries.
In 2025 plans are in place to add information to an automated text once claims are registered. Work is also being undertaken to add a page to gov.uk
In addition to this, new staff have been recruited and staff redeployed to help meet the increased number of claims and work is also underway to deliver improvements to the customer journey.
Asked by: Pippa Heylings (Liberal Democrat - South Cambridgeshire)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what her planned timetable is for responding to the Gingerbread report entitled Fix the Child Maintenance Service, published on 25 November 2024.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) continues to engage regularly with stakeholders as we consider CMS reform. We are currently considering the recommendations from the Gingerbread report ‘Fix the CMS’ alongside other potential changes we have been discussing with stakeholders.
Asked by: Pippa Heylings (Liberal Democrat - South Cambridgeshire)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will make an assessment of the effectiveness of the support provided by her Department in helping disabled people (a) find and (b) maintain employment.
Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
As part of the get Britain working plan, more disabled people and those with health conditions will be supported to enter and stay in work, by devolving more power to local areas so they can shape a joined-up work, health, and skills offer that suits the needs of the people they serve.
Good quality work is generally good for health and wellbeing, so we want everyone to get work and get on in work, whoever they are and wherever they live. We want people to avoid poverty, and for this to happen we must ensure that disabled people and people with health conditions have the opportunity to work and save for as long as they wish and are able to.
The DWP delivers a range of interventions to help disabled people and people with long-term health conditions to find and stay in work. We have already published several evaluations of the effectiveness of some of these programmes. These include the JOBS II evaluation, Employment Advisors in Improved Access to Psychological Therapies and the Health Led Trials.
For future interventions, the DWP is committed to adhering to HMT and Government Social Research guidelines, which includes proportionate evaluation and assessment of the effectiveness of any support in finding and staying in work, alongside wellbeing outcomes. All planned and live evaluations and evaluation reports will be registered on an Evaluation Registry from early 2025. “Evaluation” refers to impact, process, and value for money evaluation studies conducted in line with the Magenta Book.