Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he is taking to help ensure that people who have experienced work-related stress are helped to re-engage with work without delay.

The Government delivers an extensive programme of initiatives to support disabled people and people with health conditions, including work-related stress, to start or speedily return to work, as well as to stay, and succeed, in work. These include:

• Initiatives to support and encourage employers to support their staff, including those who have experienced work-related stress, to stay in, or return to, work, including:
  • The Access to Work Mental Health Support Service (MHSS) providing up to 9 months of personalised, non-clinical support for people who need mental health support while in employment;
  • Disability Confident, encouraging employers to think differently about disability and health, and to take positive action to address the issues disabled employees face in the workplace;
  • An online Information Service called “Support with Employee Health and Disability”, providing better integrated and tailored guidance on supporting health and disability in the workplace;
  • Increasing access to occupational health, including the testing of financial incentives for small and medium-sized enterprises and the self-employed;
  • Access to Work grants helping towards extra costs of working beyond standard reasonable adjustments;
• Increased Work Coach support in Jobcentres for disabled people and people with health conditions receiving Universal Credit or Employment and Support Allowance;
• Disability Employment Advisers in Jobcentres offering advice and expertise on how to help disabled people and people with health conditions into work;
• Work in partnership between DWP and the health system, including:
  • Employment Advice in NHS Talking Therapies, which combines psychological treatment and employment support for people with mental health conditions which includes support to return to work following mental health-related absences, and;
  • The Individual Placement and Support in Primary Care (IPSPC) programme, a Supported Employment model (place, train and maintain) delivered in health settings, aimed at people with physical or common mental health disabilities to support them to access paid jobs in the open labour market.
• The Work and Health Programme and Intensive Personalised Employment Support, providing tailored and personalised support for disabled people.