Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to Improving Lives: The Future of Work, Health and Disability, published in November 2017, Cm 9526 , if he will take steps to commission specialist external providers to make available high-quality, impairment-specific employment support to help disabled people into the workforce.

We have just published Improving Lives: The Future of Work, Health and Disability. This outlines the action taken over the past year, provides a comprehensive strategy and sets out plans over the next ten years, focusing in particular on the next steps planned over the next two to three years. This has been put together in partnership with stakeholders from across the work, health and disability spectrums and follows a thorough 15-week consultation via the Green Paper, which received around 6,000 responses. We have started building an extensive evidence base and are running a series of trials to build this further.

Improving Lives includes plans for a broad programme of employment support for disabled people, with a mix of internal and external provision and pan-disability and specialist support. A range of specialist providers are involved, for example in the mental health area where we plan to: double the scale of Individual Placement and Support (IPS) for people with mental health conditions; trial IPS in new settings and for new population groups; and significantly increase the capacity of the Access to Work Mental Health Support Service. A proof of concept of local supported employment will work with experts in helping people with learning disabilities and autism into work. Specialist Employment Support includes providers with specialist expertise in sensory impairments. We have also progressed with roll-out of the Personal Support Package, a range of new measures and interventions designed to offer support which can be tailored to people’s individual needs.

Implementation of the Work and Health Programme started at the end of November 2017. This will provide innovative support through local organisations for around 200,000 disabled people over the course of the programme, with the type of support personalised to the needs of each participant. Examples of the type of support available includes participants having a personal key worker with regular 1:1 face to face contact, mentoring and peer support, integrated access to specialist support networks at a local level including health and wellbeing professionals and support from dedicated employer experts with knowledge of the local labour market and job opportunities.