Policy & research organisations

Disability Rights UK has published a summary of the Closing the Skills Gap reports. The report highlights their findings on the skills young disabled people need to get into employment; and on skills for people who acquire impairments or conditions during working life. Their findings, based on the two reports, stress: * the importance of peer to peer support * a need for disabled people to be able to exercise choice and control There are critical success factors from the 2 reports:

This review, from Professor Dan Finn, examines the devolution of welfare-to-work policies in Britain, Canada, the USA, the Netherlands and Germany, and analyses proposals for further devolution in England. It finds that:: * Devolution of the Work Programme (WP) and other employment and skills services needs tailoring to local governance capacity and should be an explicit aim of City and Growth Deals. * More devolution of the working relationship between Jobcentres and local government is needed.

This NDTi report looks at the effectiveness of commissioning of supported employment services. It finds significant variability in the cost of employment support services and costs per job outcome achieved that cannot be explained by factors such as complexity of people’s disability or size of service. The study therefore concludes that variable cost and outcomes is primarily explained by one or both of the service model being used and the strategic organisational actions taken.

This report, produced by the National Development Team for Inclusion (NDTi) for the School for Social Care Research (SSCR), summarises the economic evidence around employment supports for disabled people (including those with mental health problems).