Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of benefit assessors receiving mental health first aid training.

The department has 1700 trained Mental Health First Aiders. They are there to provide peer to peer assistance to the department’s employees across the UK.

There is mental health training available to all staff in the department who have contact with customers, however, training paused in 2020, resources were diverted to train staff from Other Government Departments, new recruits and staff redeployed to process UC claims.

Our ambition is to restart this training in 2021/22. The mental health training is a blended approach of facilitated, e-learning and leader led training.

The additional mental health training is designed to help remove any bias or stigma around mental health, and to enable staff to respond appropriately to each customer’s issues.