Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps the Government are taking to help increase employment opportunities for people with autism.

The Government is committed to supporting all neurodivergent people, including autistic people, into and at work. This is part of our wider commitment to drive healthy and inclusive workplaces for all.

Our employment support for neurodivergent people is led by DWP’s £1 billion, voluntary, locally-led Supported Employment programme, Connect to Work. It covers all of England and Wales, with the exception of Greater Manchester which is using their Connect to Work funding to pilot their Prevention Demonstrator, through their Integrated Settlement.

Connect to Work will support around 300,000 disabled people, people with health conditions and individuals with complex barriers to employment by the end of the decade. It offers intensive, personalised employment support to help people move into and stay in paid employment, and is built around two internationally recognised evidence-based Supported Employment frameworks: Individual Placement and Support, and the Supported Employment Quality Framework. The latter has been specifically designed to support neurodivergent people and those with learning disabilities into sustainable jobs. Crucially, Connect to Work supports both participants and employers, helping to ensure that individuals are given the best chance to succeed once in work.

We recognise that supporting employers to understand the needs of neurodivergent employees is also key to our efforts. This year we funded free-of-charge neurodiversity masterclasses, delivered by ACAS, to help small and medium sized businesses build their understanding of neurodivergence and improve workplace support. Over 1800 representatives of small and medium sized businesses attended these masterclasses.

As announced early this year, we are reforming our Disability Confident scheme by strengthening its criteria and expectations to drive meaningful change across its approximately 19,000 employer members and the estimated 11.5 million employees working in their organisations. The reforms will provide clearer, more robust guidance on inclusive recruitment and retention, including for autistic people; and these reforms are being closely aligned with the work of the Keep Britain Working Review.

As part of the vanguard phase of the Keep Britain Working Review, we are working directly with employers to identify what “good” looks like in inclusive workplace practice, including for neurodivergent employees. This vanguard phase includes over 150 volunteer employers and 10 regions and will, over the next three years, work with government to test employer-led approaches to support individuals to stay in and return to work.

Finally, last year, DWP launched an independent panel of academics with expertise and lived experiences of neurodiversity to advise us on boosting neurodiversity awareness and inclusion at work. The panel considered the reasons why neurodivergent people have poor experiences in the workplace, and a low overall employment rate. DWP has now received a final version of the Panel’s report and is considering its findings.