Disabled workers face delays of more than six months before their applications are even assessed, meaning they lose work, have job offers rescinded and lose confidence. Just a few weeks ago, Labour’s Alison McGovern admitted that 55,500 applications are currently outstanding.
Sight-loss charity RNIB has been campaigning to improve Access to Work provision for years. Roisin Jacklin, policy officer at RNIB, said: “There’s going to be a huge number of people who are at risk of falling out of the workplace without the support and adjustments they need due to these delays.”
Jacklin spoke of people contacting RNIB saying they have been placed on review at work or failed their probationary periods because they can’t do the work they are supposed to be doing, purely due to the lack of promised accommodations. This inevitably impacts their confidence and mental health.
One person contacted RNIB after running into Access to Work problems during their first job after university. As Jacklin explained: “Being in their first job and not having that support that they’re entitled to, it really knocked their confidence.”
Delays are not the only problem with Access to Work. Disabled people, already twice as likely to be in debt, are sometimes expected to pay for their accommodations themselves and wait to be refunded by the DWP.
Others give up on Access to Work altogether and self-fund their support, which is expensive and often means only being able to afford minimal help. Paying for a support worker out of your wage eats most of it up, a cost that non-disabled people would never have to shell out for.
All of this comes in a context where the government is desperate to get disabled people into work. Work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall has bold plans to “get Britain working“, but there is an apparent lack of joined-up thinking.
In a speech in Barnsley, Kendall talked about “spiralling inactivity” in the UK, “driven by the fact we are an older, sicker nation” and the government’s goal to get two million more people into work.
She also said that “under this government there will be obligations to engage with support”. But what support is that? People on the endless Access to Work waiting list are desperate for support with their employment but are unable to access it.
Asked about this apparent contradiction, Jacklin from RNIB said: “We welcome the government’s focus on supporting more disabled people into work. But the key for us is fixing Access to Work.
“We know when it does work, it works so well, and in the past we’ve heard such positive things from blind and partially sighted people, that it really enables them to either stay in or start work.”
But goals to get more disabled people into work will only add pressure to the growing Access to Work backlog, Jacklin fears, saying: “The majority of people who are stuck in the queue, they’re already in work. So if you’re going to add more demand on Access to Work, it’s going to become even more overstretched.”
The government cannot justify under-resourcing Access to Work by saying that it’s too costly to provide this support. When disabled people are in work, we pay more tax. We employ support workers, who also pay more tax, and we buy things that bring revenue into the government’s coffers. In fact, charity Scope told the government that every £1 spent on Access to Work “provides a saving of £1.88 to the treasury”.
But Jacklin is optimistic that things can improve, following Labour promises to address the Access to Work backlog. In the meantime, for people struggling to access Access to Work, she recommends the RNIB helpline, making a complaint, or even asking your MP to intervene on your behalf.
In a society where disabled people have been consistently demonised as work-shy benefit scroungers, it is frustrating to be prevented from working by this creaking system.
If Access to Work helped people as it should, more of us could work. Many politicians believe it’s advantageous to take a strong stance against “scroungers”, but if they fail to implement measures that are known to make a real-life difference for those who are able to work, where is the real strategy to make higher employment of disabled people happen?
A DWP spokesperson said: “This government’s mission is to deliver opportunities for all – including disabled people who want to work and who have been denied the support they need to start or stay in fulfilling work.
“We’ve brought in extra staff to process Access to Work claims while making online applications easier so we can help more people get the support they need. We would encourage people to speak to their employer before applying to Access to Work to ensure that reasonable workplace adjustments are put in place.”
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