Employment: Mental Illness

(asked on 31st October 2018) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many large businesses have adopted the enhanced standards set out in the report, Thriving at Work: a review of mental health and employers, published by her Department in October 2017.


Answered by
Sarah Newton Portrait
Sarah Newton
This question was answered on 5th November 2018

The Government responded to Thriving at Work: Stevenson/Farmer Review of mental health and employers in the command paper Improving Lives: The Future of Work, Health and Disability which was published on 30th November 2017. The joint DWP and DHSC Work and Health Unit is now overseeing progress across 40 recommendations that range from short term deliverables to longer term reform.

We have made significant progress on ensuring the public sector leads the way: the NHS is implementing the mental health standards through the new single NHS Workforce Health and Wellbeing Framework, which was published on 16th May 2018 and shared with NHS organisations, and the Civil Service has benchmarked all main government departments and their agencies/NDPBs against the core and enhanced mental health standards to identify best practice and areas requiring further action. We also held a Public Sector Summit on 18th July 2018 which brought together public sector leaders and experts to share best practice on mental health support and how the review’s recommendations are being implemented and championed.

We have also been progressing a range of policy work on which we will report in due course.

We have promoted the standards to private sector employers through a range of communication channels and supported Mind in the development of their mental health at work online gateway, but data on numbers of businesses who have adopted the core and enhanced standards is not held centrally. We will continue to work with key stakeholders across the public, private and voluntary sectors to ensure that employers of all sizes act to implement the core and enhanced standards and help them, and their employees, realise the benefits of healthy, inclusive workplaces.

Reticulating Splines