£1.1bn in government funding for the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) is set to help disabled people into work over the next three years
The Department for Work and Pensions are offering targeted additional support for groups needing extra help to get into work, with £1.1bn over the next 3 years going towards specialised disability employment schemes.
This includes an additional £156m which will focus on work coaches for disabled people, as well as other disability and health-related support.
This support comes alongside other budget changes such as an increase in National Living Wage from £8.91 per hour to £9.50 per hour for those over 23 from April 2022, extra training whilst on Universal Credit and continued support for disabled individuals in the form of the Access to Work scheme.
The DWP has been criticised for its attitude towards disabled people in the past, especially in its approach to welfare assessment procedures, which many disability charities and advocates have viewed as clinical.
This additional support towards disabled people is one of the ways that the department is attempting to be more inclusive, alongside the Health and Disability Green paper released this year by previous Minister for Disabled People Justin Tomlinson and the new National Strategy for Disabled People.
However, the National Strategy for Disabled People has been heavily criticised by campaigners such as Disability Rights UK and Rt Hon Stephen Timms MP, Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee who commented: ‘The Government is not far from meeting its current target for increasing the number of disabled people in work.
‘But it has largely got there because overall levels of employment have risen, and the prevalence of disability has increased—not because of substantial progress in tackling the barriers that disabled people face.’
This raises the question of whether additional support in accessing work coaching will help disabled people overall if the barriers that they find within the workplace – from the interview onwards – are just as difficult to overcome.
The Government and the DWP will also continue to support people into work with over £6bn for the next three years to help people gain employment, earn more, and upskill.