Asked by: Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham North)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people in receipt of Carer's Allowance are in paid employment.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)
Data from the Family and Resources Survey 2022/23 shows there were 150,355 households in receipt of Carer’s Allowance in the UK that also had someone in paid employment. This data is available on Stat-Xplore here.
Asked by: Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham North)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people in receipt of Attendance Allowance are in paid employment.
Answered by Paul Maynard
The requested information is not available.
Asked by: Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham North)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department took to engage with (a) disabled people and (b) disabled people's organisations when developing the Work Well programme.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)
The 15 WorkWell pilot areas, which were announced on 7 May, will receive funding to locally design and lead their integrated work and health support services to meet the needs of their local populations. Pilot areas will be engaging end users, including disabled people, in the design and delivery of these services.
The lessons we learn from WorkWell will be critical to our longer-term work and will bolster the evidence base around what works to support disabled people to start, stay and succeed in work.
Prospective WorkWell pilot areas submitted applications which were scored against four criteria published in the WorkWell Prospectus on gov.uk (www.gov.uk/government/publications/workwell):
- Their understanding of the geography and demography of their chosen footprint;
- Their approach to work and health strategy integration;
- Their proposed delivery model for their WorkWell service;
- Their experience of and approach to, governance and working effectively with delivery partners across local systems.
In addition, a decision was taken to ensure that at least one site was selected in each of the 7 NHS England regions, and at least two of the 15 areas would be classified as predominantly rural.
The Department has commissioned an independent consortium of evaluators to carry out a national evaluation of WorkWell that will look to measure the effectiveness of the pilot, using surveys, interviews and econometric measures of success.
Asked by: Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham North)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how his Department plans to measure the effectiveness of the WorkWell programme pilots.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)
The 15 WorkWell pilot areas, which were announced on 7 May, will receive funding to locally design and lead their integrated work and health support services to meet the needs of their local populations. Pilot areas will be engaging end users, including disabled people, in the design and delivery of these services.
The lessons we learn from WorkWell will be critical to our longer-term work and will bolster the evidence base around what works to support disabled people to start, stay and succeed in work.
Prospective WorkWell pilot areas submitted applications which were scored against four criteria published in the WorkWell Prospectus on gov.uk (www.gov.uk/government/publications/workwell):
- Their understanding of the geography and demography of their chosen footprint;
- Their approach to work and health strategy integration;
- Their proposed delivery model for their WorkWell service;
- Their experience of and approach to, governance and working effectively with delivery partners across local systems.
In addition, a decision was taken to ensure that at least one site was selected in each of the 7 NHS England regions, and at least two of the 15 areas would be classified as predominantly rural.
The Department has commissioned an independent consortium of evaluators to carry out a national evaluation of WorkWell that will look to measure the effectiveness of the pilot, using surveys, interviews and econometric measures of success.
Asked by: Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham North)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what criteria his Department used to select the pilot areas for the WorkWell programme.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)
The 15 WorkWell pilot areas, which were announced on 7 May, will receive funding to locally design and lead their integrated work and health support services to meet the needs of their local populations. Pilot areas will be engaging end users, including disabled people, in the design and delivery of these services.
The lessons we learn from WorkWell will be critical to our longer-term work and will bolster the evidence base around what works to support disabled people to start, stay and succeed in work.
Prospective WorkWell pilot areas submitted applications which were scored against four criteria published in the WorkWell Prospectus on gov.uk (www.gov.uk/government/publications/workwell):
- Their understanding of the geography and demography of their chosen footprint;
- Their approach to work and health strategy integration;
- Their proposed delivery model for their WorkWell service;
- Their experience of and approach to, governance and working effectively with delivery partners across local systems.
In addition, a decision was taken to ensure that at least one site was selected in each of the 7 NHS England regions, and at least two of the 15 areas would be classified as predominantly rural.
The Department has commissioned an independent consortium of evaluators to carry out a national evaluation of WorkWell that will look to measure the effectiveness of the pilot, using surveys, interviews and econometric measures of success.
Asked by: Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham North)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people are awaiting a decision on their Access to Work applications as of 1 May 2024.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)
As of 1st May 2024, there were 36,184 applications awaiting a decision on their Access to Work application.
Asked by: Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham North)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to Q9 of the oral evidence by Gareth Parry to the Work and Pensions Committee on 17 April 2024, HC 697, whether the Work and Health Programme will end in November 2024.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)
The Work and Health Programme is part of a much wider offer to help people with disabilities and long-term health conditions and those in disadvantage groups start, stay and succeed in work.
As part of the government’s Back to Work Plan we have launched and plan to deliver a range of other support which will put in place an offer to a broader range of disabled people, for example, Universal Support will support up to 100,000 disabled people, people with health conditions and people with additional barriers to employment per year, once fully rolled out, helping them to find, enter, and remain in work
The Work and Health Programme will continue to be delivered until July 2026, further announcements on the programme will be made in due course.
Asked by: Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham North)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what national specialist employment support his Department plans to provide for disabled people, in the context of the planned ending of funding for the Work and Health Programme.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)
The government’s £2.5 billion Back to Work Plan will support over a million people to break down barriers to finding and staying in work through the use of NHS Talking Therapies, Individual Placement and Support, Restart and Universal Support which aims to support up to 100,000 disabled people, people with health conditions and people with additional barriers to employment per year, once fully rolled out, helping them to find, enter, and remain in work.
Any further announcements regarding the Work and Health Programme will be made in due course.
Asked by: Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham North)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate he has made of the potential impact of planned changes to the Work Capability Assessment on (a) appeal and (b) mandatory reconsideration costs.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)
The Department is committed to understanding the impacts of its policies on the justice system, and is carefully considering the impact of any changes on appeals and mandatory reconsiderations.
Asked by: Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham North)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent progress his Department has made towards the full rollout of the Universal Support programme.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)
Universal Support will be delivered through around 50 Local Authority led delivery areas, covering all of England and Wales. We expect areas will go live with Universal Support in a phased way from Autumn 2024. We will shortly publish a Universal Support prospectus, which will provide an overview of the expectations for the programme. We aim to publish the Grant Guidance and associated materials before the summer recess. We will work collaboratively with delivery areas to agree their delivery plans and implementation timetables.