Employment: Disability
(asked on 23rd January 2020) - View Source
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps she is taking to help women with disabilities into work.
The Government is committed to reducing the disability employment gap and seeing a million more disabled people, regardless of gender, in work between 2017 and 2027.
The Work and Health Programme is designed to help people, particularly people with disabilities, who need extra tailored support to find employment. The latest statistics for programme were published in November 2019, covering the period up to August 2019, and show that 29,300 women have started on the programme since it began to roll out across the country.
The latest Access to Work statistics, published in August 2019 and covering the period up to March 2019, show that a record 22,030 women received support through the scheme.
In December 2019 we launched the Intensive Personalised Employment Support Programme. This is a new, voluntary, contracted employment provision designed to help disabled people, regardless of gender, who have complex needs or barriers and who want to work.
According to a report published in December 2019 by the Office for national Statistics, in 2019, the disability employment gap was 31.7 percentage points for men and 25.0 percentage points for women. The employment rate has risen more rapidly for disabled women between 2013 and 2019, increasing by 10.5 percentage points, compared with a 9.0 percentage point increase for disabled men.
The full report may be viewed here: