People with Learning Disabilities: Employment

Tom Pursglove Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work (Tom Pursglove)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) for securing this important debate and for speaking with such great passion. He very much shares my determination to do better in this area to help and support more disabled people into work and unlock all that potential that we know exists.

In 2017, the Government set the goal of seeing a million more disabled people in employment between 2017 and 2027. I am proud to say that, by the first quarter of 2022, the number of disabled people in employment had increased by 1.3 million, which means that the goal was met after only five years. By the first quarter of 2023, disability employment had risen by 1.6 million in total since the goal was announced, but we are aware that this progress has not been even. Those early successes must be a catalyst for further change. We know that most learning-disabled people want to have a job, and evidence shows that they bring many positive benefits to their employers. That is something I hear time and again, as I go round the country meeting employers and meeting disabled people experiencing the benefits of work.

But we also know that less than three in 10 working-age people with severe and specific learning disabilities are currently in employment. That means that more than seven in 10 of this group are still unable to access the independence and sense of fulfilment that employment can bring, and that many employers are not benefiting from the enthusiasm, skills and commitment that they can bring to their workplaces. We are therefore working hard in Government, as an enabler and with others, to support learning- disabled people to secure, sustain and succeed in employment.

We are continuing to improve the general support available to learning-disabled claimants when they attend the jobcentre. Additional work coach support provides disabled people and those with health conditions with increased one-to-one personalised support from their work coach to help them move towards and into work. That support is already available in two thirds of jobcentres in England, Scotland, and Wales. It will be available nationally in 2024. We have strengthened our disability employment adviser role, delivering direct support to claimants who require additional work-related support and supporting all work coaches to deliver tailored, personalised support to claimants with a disability or health condition, including those with a learning disability.

As well as this general support, we are providing a range of special programmes that can help learning-disabled people to access employment. They will have priority access to the work and health programme in England and Wales. Intensive personalised employment support provision has also been available in England and Wales, providing highly personalised packages of specialist employment support for disabled people and people with health conditions to achieve sustained employment.

The local supported employment programme helps people with learning difficulties and/or autism to find and retain work through intensive one-to-one support and an evidence-based approach to supported employment. Local supported employment aims to develop a sustainable model by giving intensive one-to-one support to those faced with significant barriers to work. We have funded 23 lead local authorities to deliver local supported employment in 28 local authority areas in England and Wales from November 2022 until March 2025. Over that period, LSE will help about 12,000 people to move into and stay in work. An average of 90 participants in each of the 28 local authority areas are set to benefit from £7.4 million in grant funding and support which will include the assignment of job coaches who can carry out vocational profiling, engage employers and provide in-work support to enable this group to enter and maintain employment in the open labour market.

The spring Budget confirmed funding for a new employment programme called universal support, which will use the proven supported employment model to help inactive disabled people, people with health conditions and those facing additional barriers to employment into sustained work—doing more of what we know succeeds in securing meaningful outcomes for people. One of the aspects of the coverage of this issue that frustrates me the most is the failure to recognise that it is as important to focus on retention as it is to focus on job starts, and that both must be seen in tandem. That is precisely what universal support will help us to do. Eligible learning-disabled people will be able to opt into receiving up to 12 months of “place and train” support helping them to move quickly into suitable work, followed by wraparound support to help them to sustain that employment in the longer term. I am pleased to confirm that following the announcement in the latest autumn statement, we are expanding the universal support scheme to enable it to provide support for 100,000 people a year once it has been fully rolled out, an increase on the 50,000 places a year announced in the spring Budget.

We know that many learning-disabled people will require workplace adjustments to secure and retain employment, and the Access to Work scheme can undoubtedly help with the extra costs of working, beyond those involved in standard workplace adjustments. Access to Work contributes to the disability-related extra costs of working faced by disabled people and those with a health condition in the workplace that are beyond the costs of standard reasonable adjustments, and includes the provision of support workers, specialist aids and equipment, and help with travel to and from work. As part of the scheme, we are testing an “adjustments passport” in a variety of settings to establish whether it can reduce the need for assessments when the requirements remain the same and need to be “passported” around to help a person enter into a role and then make progress within it, as well as making conversations with employers easier.

We recently launched an Access to Work adjustments planner, which will be rolled out to all universities and higher education colleges. The planner collects key information about a student’s adjustment needs which can be easily shared with prospective employers. Trial results show that disabled students using the planner are more confident about entering employment. We are also testing Access to Work Plus, a new employer offer that can offer additional support to employers who are willing to think differently about their vacancies and consider whether they can adapt, shape or flex a job to enable a disabled person to retain, return to or move into employment. That is relevant to my hon. Friend’s point about the key support that needs to be available to aid people’s transition into work, and available at various points in their lives when they want to enter the workplace or increase their educational opportunities, and to maximise those life chances.

During their transition to employment, learning-disabled young people can benefit from supported internships, which are aimed at those with a learning disability or autism who have an education, health and care plan. Supported Internships usually last for 12 months, contributing to the long-term career goals of young people and matching their capabilities. Alongside their time with an employer, supported interns receive support from a specialist job coach and complete a personalised study programme delivered by the school or college, which includes the chance to study for relevant qualifications, if appropriate, and to receive English and maths tuition at an appropriate level. While the Department for Education leads on this in England, the Department for Work and Pensions provides support for Access to Work where needed and I would be happy to ask colleagues in the Department for Education to provide further details to my hon. Friend about the opportunities that supported internships can provide.

Separately, the autism employment review, led by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland), has been receiving evidence this year about the barriers preventing autistic people from starting, staying and succeeding in employment and how those barriers can be overcome. Although the review focuses specifically on autistic people, many of the adjustments and initiatives that will benefit them will also benefit a wider group of people including learning-disabled people and people with other disabilities. I am hugely grateful to him for all his efforts.

[Sir Robert Buckland]

I am grateful to the Minister and the departmental officials who are here for their close work on the independent review. I am glad that he has made the point that, although we focus on autism, the wider point about neurodiversity must not escape us. As the evidence has emerged, the concept of a more universal approach to the way in which employers interview people generally seems to be the real answer, when dealing not just with people who are diagnosed but with those who perhaps do not even realise they might have a condition or issue that has not been diagnosed or acknowledged.

[Tom Pursglove]

My right hon. and learned Friend raises an important point and I look forward to receiving the final recommendations from the review, which will help to inform the forward decisions that we take as a Department. I would be keen to pick up with him on that specific point separately from this evening. I also want to thank every Disability Confident employer out there for the enormous contribution that they make and for their commitment to supporting the important goals that we have been debating this evening.

I am aware that my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield has a particular and very praiseworthy interest in helping people with Down’s syndrome to succeed in work and in life. He referred to Jossie, an inspirational young lady with Down’s syndrome in his constituency. He also referred to the great work being done by the Rumbles charity in his constituency, and it was an honour for me to visit Rumbles with him earlier in the year to see its magnificent work for myself and to meet Gina and Tamar and the energetic team at Rumbles who bring so much to that community and help to provide so much opportunity. I wish them every success in their work.

I am keen to help this group and I have been speaking to the Down’s Syndrome Association about its WorkFit programme. On Wednesday, I will visit its site to visit two of its WorkFit candidates who will share with me their experiences of the workplace and how they were supported to find and maintain their jobs. As my hon. Friend points out, the key to the success of the WorkFit programme is a bespoke person-centred approach for each candidate and bespoke advice, resources and training for each employer taking part.

As we develop and roll out our new programmes, we will be keeping this need for a personalised approach very much in mind, because—touching on the points made by the hon. Members for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon)—that provision is so helpful to people in beginning to provide those early opportunities, precisely as Rumbles does and as the Step and Stone Bakery in Bristol does, which I have also had the privilege of visiting. I met the inspirational women who run it, Jane Kippax and Jane Chong. I also visited Tapestry by Props Brewery in Bristol, run by the enthusiastic chief executive officer of that organisation, Colin Fletcher, and his team. And only last week, I visited the Fair Shot Café in Covent Garden, run by its founder and CEO, Bianca Tavella. These are amazing organisations providing early opportunities for people to develop their skills, and that is a model I want to look at to see what more we can do to help to support them. All those organisations and many others across the country can be enormously proud of the contribution they make to supporting employment opportunities.

My message to the Ashfield Independents who run the local authority in my hon. Friend’s area would be that they ought to look at this issue in the round. The support that services such as these can provide is an invaluable resource, not just for improving the life chances and opportunities of the individuals who work in those cafés but for doing right by the taxpayer and helping to minimise costs elsewhere in the round. I hope that they will find a common-sense solution to support that brilliant provision for the years to come. I just could not be clearer: these opportunities are life-changing. Work has such a positive benefit for people in so many respects, and those opportunities should be extended to all who wish to have them. That is our clear mission as a Government and I am grateful to Members across the House for their support in that endeavour.

Question put and agreed to.