The disability and health employment strategy: the discussion so far

The Government has published a discussion paper on the Disability and Health Employment Strategy. The paper sets out a range of proposals to further improve employment support. It will be followed in 2014 by publication of the government’s delivery plan.

The proposals focus on:

• supporting employers to recruit, retain and develop disabled people and people with health conditions;
• enabling more young disabled people and people with health conditions to make a successful transition from education to employment;
• developing a new Gateway to our employment services, to ensure that disabled people and people with health conditions get the right support at the right time to enable them to get into or get back into work;
• improving our specialist offer for disabled people and people with health conditions by ensuring that it includes a number of key features, including greater personalisation, better integration of local services, better use of local providers and a greater focus on Supported Employment;
• improving our mainstream offer for disabled people and people with health conditions by developing the evidence base about what is most effective in supporting them into employment; and
• developing more effective approaches for supporting people with mental health problems to get into work, focusing particularly on better alignment between employment and health services and building on the proposals outlined by the Task and Finish Group and the Psychological Wellbeing and Work project.