Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps her Department will take to raise awareness of the Access to Work scheme among (a) employers and (b) employees.

DWP is committed to increasing awareness of the Access to Work scheme amongst individuals with disabilities and health conditions, employers and stakeholders.

Over the past 18 months Access to Work have delivered in-depth upskilling sessions to a wide variety of internal colleagues, including Work Coaches, Disability Employment Advisers and Employer Advisers. Externally we have also provided awareness of Access to Work to a range of organisations, employers and customer representative groups. This will continue throughout 2022, focusing activities in areas with the largest disability employment gap.

We frequently promote Access to Work through the Department’s social media channels and have introduced specific Access to Work pages on the JobHelp website (to maximise reach via our Jobhelp TV campaign), and on gov.uk. In addition, we are continuing to promote Access to Work to employers as part of the Disability Confident scheme.