Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, which organisations are contracted providers to identify and refer potential participants for the Universal Support scheme; and how many participants each of those contracted providers has referred onto that scheme.

Universal Support (US) is being delivered in two phases. The expansions to Individual Placement and Support in Primary Care (IPSPC) and the Work and Health Programme (WHP Pioneer) are being rolled out for phase one of the service. IPSPC is not a Contracted Employment Provision, it is a grant awarded to Local Authorities (LAs) to deliver the provision and that could involve in-house delivery or contracted out to providers by the Grant Recipient (LA).

In order to make WHP Pioneer accessible to all eligible individuals, including those who are not regular customers of Jobcentre Plus, DWP Signposting Organisations (SOs), including contracted providers, will be able to signpost individuals that they think will benefit from WHP Pioneer to DWP. However, please note the final decision regarding a referral to WHP Pioneer will remain with DWP. For WHP Pioneer the majority of referrals will be made via this route by providers. A list of providers can be found here.

Information regarding how many participants each contracted provider has referred is not available.

Statistics on the WHP Pioneer data element of US are planned to be published later this month, and we are committed to publishing IPSPC programme data in due course.