User led disability charity Buckinghamshire Disability Service (BuDS) has criticised as ‘frightening and counter-productive’ Liz Kendall MP’s statement to the BBC that DWP Work Coaches will be offering employment support to inpatients in mental health hospitals.
In a statement issued by the charity, the Chair of Trustees, Andrew Clark, said:
“As a charity, we feel well qualified to speak on this matter. Not only does BuDS include people with mental health conditions, many of whom have been inpatients, but we support many people with mental health issues into work through our Reach4Work project. That project was led until recently by a person with bipolar affective disorder – see https://buds.org.uk/buds-bipolar-and-me-my-journey-with-reach4work/
We recognise that, for some people with mental health conditions, moving into work (or moving closer to work) can be highly beneficial. But, for an equal number of people, work makes their mental health conditions, worse. Working is stressful and demanding and many workplaces are toxic and damaging to people’s mental health and wellbeing. And many people with mental health conditions, especially chronic or complex conditions, are simply not able to work on the terms offered by employers.
Liz Kendall’s announcement that DWP job coaches are going to visit mental health hospitals and units is frightening and counter-productive to the aim she is seeking. For decades, mental health services have included employment and job support as part of the rehabilitation offered to all patients. This support is provided by experienced job coaches who offer tailored encouragement and support alongside other community rehabilitation services. JobCentre Work Coaches, on the other hand, are seen by disabled people as enforcers of the DWP’s notoriously brutal benefits regime, seeking to test whether disabled people are entitled to benefits or to shove them into work to cut the benefits bill. Such people have no place in wards and units filled with people being treated for serious mental health conditions. Their presence – even the fear of their possible arrival – will cause patients’ mental health to deteriorate making their journey to work even longer and more difficult.
Liz Kendall needs to openly acknowledge that ‘work’ is not a universal panacea which is helpful or open to everyone. She also needs to acknowledge that the main barrier to disabled people getting work, including those with mental health conditions, is employers and their attitudes. Disabled people need inclusive workplaces which offer flexible, often remote, working options, where colleagues have a commitment to diversity and inclusion, and bosses who work with employees to bring out their strengths rather than focus on their weaknesses.
Rather than sending civil servants into mental health hospitals in order, as it will be seen, to bully patients off benefits and into work, BuDS calls on the DWP to increase funding for existing NHS employment rehabilitation schemes. These highly specialist and effective services have been neglected for many years but offer a quick and relatively inexpensive way to better support those patients for whom work is a beneficial outcome. BuDS would like to see every NHS specialist service having an employment support component, not just mental health. There will then be no need for JobCentre staff to start stalking the corridors.
BuDS also calls on DWP to significantly toughen its ‘Disability Confident’ scheme to require employers to offer genuinely inclusive workplaces which will readily accept and include disabled workers. The scheme, inherited from the last government, is currently no more than a tick-box virtue-signalling exercise for employers. As the DWP’s own research shows, ‘disability confident’ employers are no more likely to employ disabled people than employers not part of the scheme (Top Disability Confident members ‘do no better on jobs than non-members’ – Disability News Service).”