News

It is wonderful to see the commitment in celebrating Disability History Month 2022- yet the latest ASCOF figures show that organisations confidence around disability isn’t extended to everyone.  

4500 16-25 year olds with special educational needs and disabilities in England are set to benefit from a new, life changing, supported internships programme per year by 2025.

The Department for Education funded programme is designed to support more young people with additional needs to have greater choice and control over opportunities that prepare them for adult life and enable them to gain long-term meaningful employment. Currently, only 5.1% of people with special educational needs and disabilities gain permanent paid employment in the UK, compared to 80% of their peers.

A new £7.6 million government initiative has been launched to help over 2,000 adults with learning disabilities and autism move into work.

The Local Supported Employment (LSE) initiative is providing grant funding to 24 local authorities in England and Wales, representing an investment of £7.6 million over the next three years.

Each local authority area will support between 60 and 140 adults with learning disabilities, autism or both to move into competitive employment and provide the help they need to maintain that employment.

An average of 91 participants in each local authority are set to benefit from the grant funding and support, which will include assigning job coaches who can carry out vocation profiling, engage employers and provide in-work support to help develop more careers. A total of 22 local authorities in England and two in Wales will benefit from the funding worth £7.6m over the Spending Review period.

The Work and Pensions Committee has launched an inquiry into the Government’s Plan for Jobs and other initiatives - both those introduced since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and wider schemes - aimed at helping people find and stay in work.

With the current economic climate, good news is often in short supply, which is why we're delighted to share this Supported Business success story from Alistair Kerr, the BASE Scotland Chair. It's a fantastic evidenced based example of collaboration between Scottish Government Procurement, Scottish Prison Service Procurement, a Tier1 Construction Company & BASE Scotland Network, that cuts across a number of Scottish Government Policy intents supporting people living with disabilities or who are disadvantaged is some unique way to achieve individual goals and ambitions.

The Out of Work Service and In-Work Support Service, which are helping Welsh people to rebuild their lives, will be extended until 2025.

The Out of Work Service helps the most vulnerable and those "furthest away from the labour market". It is specifically focused on providing long term support to people recovering from mental health or substance misuse issues. The service provides support through a national network of peer mentors – people who have themselves recovered from issues such as mental ill-health or substance misuse. 

DfE has published details of its Investment in Supported Internships Programme support contract. The contract is split into 2 lots: one to strengthen delivery of the Supported Internship programme and one to deliver job coach training. Bids are invited before 13 May and must be submitted through the Jaggaer e-procurement portal.

The DfE wants to build the capacity of the SI programme and are aiming to double the number of SIs from c.2,250 internship enrolments per annum to c.4,500 per annum by 2025.

 

The Supported Internship Quality Framework has been published. It was developed for the Department for Education by the Education and Training Foundation and their centres of excellence. The framework has been developed over the last 6 months and aims to improve the quality of Supported Internships (SIs) provision and outcomes. BASE has fed into discussions and we have asked for a review of the framework in 12 months.

DWP has published statistics for the Intensive Personalised Employment Support (IPES) programme following a Freedom of Information request from BASE. The statistics have not been publically available until now despite IPES starting delivery in late 2019.

The data shows that there have been a total of 6044 programme starts since December 2019. 1071 lower threshold outcomes have been achieved so far resulting in 787 higher threshold outcomes.

The Department for Education (DfE) has today published the SEND review. The Green Paper, SEND Review - right support, right place, right time, launches a consultation that seeks responses by 1st July 2022. BASE will be seeking member views on the SEND Review proposals before submitting a response.

The review has identified 3 key challenges facing the SEND and alternative provision system:

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