Government plans to get long term sick back to work.

[Miley1967]

Does anyone have any information about how the Government are planning to get long term sick/ disabled back to work? I have read there is a paper being published/ announced this week. In my local area ( East Midlands) I have seen jobs advertised this week ( multiple jobs) for health and work coaches but employed through the NHS and based in Gp surgeries, so it does seem as though they are already taking steps to implement this.
Just a bit worried for some of my clients( I work in benefits advice work ) as to whether this is going to be pushed on them or if it's a scheme they will choose to be part of and just wondering what it is going to entail, will these coaches be working with employers who are genuinely going to be able to support this group of people into work?

If the waiting times for diagnostic assessments weren't measured in years, people wouldn't resort to self-diagnosis!

Fix. The. Waiting. List. Crisis.

Punishment for crime is unpaid. This would be paid with benefits. I don't think that is the same at all. Not many people can't do any form of work given the wide range of work available.

The US tried this, called it "workfare". It didn't go so well.

• People's workfare placements were often at times of day and in places that the people couldn't reasonably get to.
• Many long-term unemployed are kinship carers and can't care if they are working unsuitable hours.

If the government actually wants to get disabled into work (and to stay in work) it needs to sort out the RTO trend. I know a lot of jobs are not office based, but many are - and if they can be done at home most of the time, they should be able to be, especially if someone has a disability or health condition.

Also, get tougher on age discrimination.

You wouldn't have had outrage from me. The health benefits across the nation are well worth £100/year/person.

@selffellatingouroborosofhate same

They don't just drop dead. First, they cost the NHS a lot of money treating their smoking-induced health conditions.

This already happens.

It’s really not good enough, we need a system that can provide support quickly to prevent people reaching that breaking point.

In an ideal world yes, but realistically the money just isn't there, and the economic outlook isn't likely to improve. I wonder whether we do have more mental health problems now than we did in the past, or whether we just have more ways of diagnosing them. In the past, you either just had to get on with it, or you were placed in an asylum. There has never been proper mental health support because we simply don't have the resources, as a society, to provide it.

Do you have the figures? I'd like to know how many street homeless and people with disabilities have starved to death because of benefit sanctions.

They'll probably encourage them to euthanise themselves under the 'slippery slope' of assisted dying, if legalised in the next few weeks. Hence their enthusiasm to rush the legislation through. They are already doing this in Canada and other countries.

I know this is an old report, but these sorts of sanctions are still affecting people, up, and down the Country today.

www.theguardian.com/society/2014/aug/03/victims-britains-harsh-welfare-sanctions

Do you think that the Office for National Statistics collects that data? Far from it: the DWP drops the case reports into the shredder.

Some individual cases:

• https://www.disabilityrightsuk.org/news/2020/january/disabled-man-starved-death-after-dwp-wrongly-stopped-his-benefits
• https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/mark-wood-sweet-and-gentle-44yearold-man-with-mental-health-problems-starved-to-death-after-benefits-cut-9161749.html
• https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/dwp-hounded-disabled-woman-for-years-before-her-starvation-death-papers-show/

Homeless people (as in statutory homeless, not necessarily rough sleepers) are more than twice as likely to be disabled than the general population. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/articles/peopleexperiencinghomelessnessenglandandwales/census2021/pdf

Most European countries, and all Scandinavian countries (the gold standard on MN) take a much higher % of basic wages in income tax. So if you lose your job, you are entitled to 9 or 10 months benefits at 60-70% of your previous earnings while you sort your situation out again. But there is no UC for anyone working 16 hours a week, which is the point at which the employer has to fund sick pay or holidays or pension contributions.

I thought the poster meant that there were significant amounts of disabled people who had been sanctioned. I couldn't find any evidence of that but had heard of a few of these dreadful deaths.

The benefits system is complicated at the best of times and many people are vulnerable. These people were too quickly sanctioned and unable to advocate for themselves.

I can imagine this happening! I am so against this bill.

From page 36 of the first PDF at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/rough-sleeping-questionnaire-initial-findings

50% of rough sleepers have a long-standing illness, disability, or impairment.

I am pro the assisted dying bill, but mainly because my much loved DMIL who endured 25 years of ill health and discomfort in her last years, campaigned fervently for it. She was a nurse, and I promised her that if she was ever diagnosed with a terminal condition, I would accompany her to Dignitas. Of course, her terminal condition was vascular dementia which denied her the capacity to make the choice. Eventually we watched her suffer a broken femur, followed by a 27 hour wait for an ambulance, then six weeks in an acute geriatric orthopaedic ward, and finally a transfer back to her care home where she died five hours later. I cannot bring myself to express the horrors that we, as a family, endured, when a simple large dose of strong pain relief could have been administered. DMIL was already 94 and frail and probably clinically depressed. What miracle was expected? There is a time to die, and DMIL knew she was nearing the Pearly Gates and was actively keen to walk through.

Exactly this !

I think we need to be much more stringent on what constitutes a mental health issue.

There just isn't the revenue in our economy to featherbed anxieties. I apologise to everyone who thinks that sounds hard nosed.

The level of support does need to drop off over time otherwise people get too embedded into not working. Not working is bad for health, particularly mental health. It is always case people want low taxes but services that solve everything for them. It cannot be the case that 1 in 10 working age adults are unable to do any kind of productive work.

I also think this is going to be next thing to cause unpopularity for Starmer. The disabled are going to be added to the list of pensioners, farmers etc. But it needs to happen. Reducing the non-working benefits bill is a very conservative policy but you can bet the tories will now be opposing it for the popularity, but like the means testing of WFP which is a very consevative policy.

The critical failure of democracy comes when the majority of the voting population realise they can vote themselves more in benefits than they pay in tax. It doesn't last very long and the solution is called Argentina.

The problem is there needs to be adequate support in place to enable people to work.

For example, accessible mental health care and health care professionals for those with physical disabilities.

The workplace also needs to make adjustments for those with disabilities and be prepared to support people who have been out of work for a long time and may have significant issues.