Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps the Government is taking to assess which workplace interventions are suitable to help ensure that people with arthritis are able to remain in work.

The Government has a range of initiatives to provide expert and tailored support for disabled people and people with health conditions, including people with arthritis, to start, stay and succeed in work. These focus on providing suitable interventions for each individual and helping employers to support their employees’ needs:

• Access to Work grants helping towards extra costs of working beyond standard reasonable adjustments;
• Disability Confident, encouraging employers to think differently about disability and health, and to take positive action to address the issues disabled employees face in the workplace;
• An online Information Service called “Support with Employee Health and Disability”, providing better integrated and tailored guidance on supporting health and disability in the workplace;
• Increasing access to occupational health, including the testing of financial incentives for small and medium-sized enterprises and the self-employed;

Work in partnership between the DWP and the health system, including the Individual Placement and Support in Primary Care (IPSPC) programme, a Supported Employment model (place, train and maintain) delivered in health settings, aimed at people with physical or common mental health conditions to support them to access paid jobs in the open labour market.