DWP Green Paper published: Shaping Future Support

The government has published its Green Paper on Health and Disability, Shaping Future Support, and will consult on the content until 11 October 2021. BASE will be responding and invites your views on the proposals contained within it. The Government has also published it's response to the 2019 consultation, Health is Everyone's Business. We expect the long-awaited National Disability Strategy to be published very soon.

The Green Paper explores how the welfare benefits system can better meet the needs of disabled people. It also explores how employment outcomes might be improved through more personalised support. It appears light on content and focuses on proposals that have been previously announced.

 

Improving employment support

This chapter focuses on early intervention to help people stay in work or return to work quickly after acquiring a disability or health condition. There are proposals for providing more support for individuals before their work capability assessment (WCA). It also proposes giving Work Coaches more discretion over claimant commitments and potential sanctions.

It again affirms that personalised support is more effective but the paper just lists currently available support, including the expansion of IPS and IAPT support. It does confirm the forthcoming supported employment trailblazer saying, "For autistic people, people with a learning disability and people with severe mental health conditions, we also tested Local Supported Employment (LSE) in partnership with nine local authorities. LSE provides intensive one-to-one support to help people enter and stay in work. We will look to expand on LSE and work with people who access local authority social care to help them access Jobcentre Plus support."

The government has commited to a digital portal for Access to Work and it is likely that an Access to Work Passport will be developed to ease transition support.

The paper also looks at how jobcentres can be made more welcoming, including better training for JCP staff.

 

Welfare benefits

As well as the new approach to conditionality, the paper looks at how benefit assessment processes can be improved and talks about separating the assessments for financial and employment support. It considers how people with limited capacity for work or those in the ESA Support Group can be supported to consider employment. The WCA and PIP (Personalised Independence Payment) descriptors may be reviewed.

 

Consultation

The consultation is open until 11 October. The main consultation areas are:

  • Ways to provide more support to help meet the needs of disabled people and people with health conditions and allow them to more easily access and use benefits and services.
  • Improve employment support for disabled people and people with health conditions, and how to encourage people to take up that support, where possible.
  • Short-term improvements to our current services, such as improvements to assessments and decision making, to improve the experience of disabled people.
  • Changes to future assessments and alternative approaches.
  • Changes that could be made to the structure of the main benefits claimed by working-age disabled people and people with health conditions.

You'll find the consultation online at https://getinvolved.dwp.gov.uk/05-policy-group/health-and-disability-green-paper/. BASE will be consulting with members before responding.

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