I’m not sure how many more times I’m going to have to write the above comment again, so if you could just read it, maybe two, three times, that would be SWELL - and you think I'M pompous!
Re disability, it's complicated in many cases. A big issue is employers in an employers market (which it usually is) are unlikely to employ anyone with a history of sickness/disability. Yes they're not supposed to discriminate but in the real world, that's what happens.
They (understandably to a degree) don't want to employ people who need time off for appointments, or because their condition is proving just too much that day. They don't want to make reasonable adjustments. There's also the fact that being off long term sick/disabled leads to loss of skills, not acquiring skills one naturally would by continuing working eg technology moves on, lack of work experience, loss of confidence, not being sure how working again will affect you (eg can you cope with full time or will part time be enough, if part time how many hours?) - including financially.
Cuts to education and training services haven't helped here. I've a friend who is working in a manual job (warehouse work) she's coping at the moment but it will become less the case as she gets older. So she thought she'd be sensible and look to retrain into something more office based. Got a place on a local college course, was all excited looking forward to it - cancelled due to cuts. She's currently looking for something similar but at the moment the nearest is about 2.5 hours away, which she couldn't manage with continuing working in order to earn and with being a single parent (father deceased sadly).
I personally mistakenly thought I was well enough to return to work part time (if an office based role with premises I could access - I can't manage stairs or slopes well) but due to lack of recent work experience it became clear I needed to update my IT skills, if only so I had something on paper to show prospective employers. But all I found was either really basic courses best suited to people who'd never used a computer before in a professional capacity (I've several years experience as an administrator but also every job I've done including nursing has meant using various bespoke software) so wasn't really suitable, or at the other end of the scale programming/web development courses which are far more advanced than where I'm at and wouldn't include the skills I needed to "brush up" on.
That's basically what I needed, a course for people who have used computers, even fairly confident, quick learners, but who were out of practice, who need pointing in the right direction and able to practice (to rebuild confidence too) those skills on the latest versions of the software which current employers are using, with guidance on most efficient use. Yet nothing like this exists near me. Talking to various local friends and acquaintances there's a demand for it, so I can only think that again it's lack of funding.
Personally I think the govt needs to employ a combination of carrot and stick approaches to encourage employers to employ sick/disabled workers.
I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm sure I remember it used to be the case that medium to large employers were required to employ X amount of sick/disabled employees and that seems to no longer be the case. But also for small to medium employers I appreciate it could be difficult financially for them to support disabled/sick employees - so maybe a tax break or something would help there?
Also courses for training, rebuilding confidence are essential and need to be reinstated.
UC was SUPPOSED to make it easier for people who'd been out of work a long time (for whatever reason) able to 'ease' back in gradually building up hours. Unfortunately the software/system actually isn't coping with this idea at all!