Jobseeker's Allowance: Learning Disability

(asked on 4th September 2017) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department has taken to ensure that people with a learning disability who are in receipt of jobseeker's allowance have access to additional specialist employment support.


Answered by
Penny Mordaunt Portrait
Penny Mordaunt
Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons
This question was answered on 7th September 2017

The Government is strongly committed to increasing employment opportunities for people with learning disabilities and are working across Government and with local authorities, voluntary organisations and employers in the public and private sectors to achieve this.

For people with a learning disability or autism who are known to adult social care services, or those in contact with secondary mental health services, we are working with local authorities, to test an approach to delivering supported employment, with payments based on employment outcomes. We are also testing supported work experience for young disabled people aged 18-24 flowing into the Work-Related Activities Group of Employment Support Allowance or the Universal Credit equivalent. Those young people with little or no work experience will be offered a supported work experience placement with an employer, to help them gain confidence and encourage them to look for work. Although the proof of concept is pan-disability we expect a significant proportion of those taking part to have a learning disability.

Eligibility to specialist employment support programmes such as Work Choice (WC) and Specialist Employability Support (SES) is not benefit or disability specific, but does include claimants who are on Jobseeker's Allowance and who have a learning disability. Of all those to have who started Work Choice, 56% were claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance and almost a quarter had a mild learning disability/moderate to severe learning disability.

We are promoting Disability Confident among employers, including the benefits to business of employing people with learning disabilities. Almost 5,000 employers have now signed up to be Disability Confident, including all Government Departments. Access to Work is also available to help people with learning disabilities into employment, such as funding for a Job Coach to support a person’s induction and provide on-site training in a new job.

DWP publishes online guidance for employing people with health conditions and disabilities, including learning disabilities. It provides information to help employers increase their understanding of disability and enable them to recruit and support disabled people and those with long term health conditions in work. The Disability Confident scheme provides links to a range of guidance and other resources to enable employers to become more confident when recruiting and retaining disabled people. The guidance can be accessed at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/employing-disabled-people-and-people-with-health-conditions/employing-disabled-people-and-people-with-health-conditions

The Green Paper Improving Lives; the Work, Health and Disability Green Paper, asked questions about how we better support people into employment and highlighted learning disabilities as an area for further discussion. We engaged in a wide range of conversations with stakeholders during the consultation period and received over 6000 responses. We are now carefully considering these formulating next steps for longer-term reform.

Reticulating Splines