Does Workwell Work Well?

 The Department of Work and Pensions announced earlier this week that, following a trial starting in October 2024 involving 25,000 working age people with health conditions, the scheme would now be rolled out nationally. They hope to reach 250,000 people.

The DWP describe the scheme as “a personalised service offering early help for people struggling with their health.” It aims to connect them to local services such as physiotherapy, counselling and also helps with workplace adjustments with the aim of enabling them to remain or gain employment.

It sounds like a localised streamlined one-stop version of Access to Work and they have had pilots in East Birmingham and North Solihull, the Black Country, North Central London, and Herefordshire and Worcestershire, They claim to have high success rates in these pilots.

Support is provided via work and health coaches and a team of clinicians and practitioners with specialising in mental health, muscular skeletal conditions, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, social prescribing and employment support.

Work and health coaches refer people to the services mentioned above as and when needed. However, their support involves creating tailored support for individuals involving work related activities such as building a cv, help with interview techniques, confidence building and support with discussing disability with prospective employers.

For those already in work they support with accessing education, training and volunteering support. They help participants to understandtheir rights and workplace laws, the reviewing of reasonable adjustments with employers. As supporting them during the process of returning to work.

This sounds all good and well and all the providers have glowing recommendations for the service and most local press is positive. However, a look at the Dwp’s own press release, for all the positivity, fails to mention how many people have been supported to find and retain work. There are statistics such as the proportion of male of females, the referral portals used and the impairment/health conditions of people using the scheme but nothing about it’s success. Other than the DWP and stakeholder partners telling you it’s great there are no official statistics. There’s a bit of positive local press in various pilot areas but no stats relating to how many found and or remained in jobs.

Now I’m not one to bash these schemes for the sake of it. In fact, on the face of it if it does exactly what it says I really like the sound of it and think in theory it is a step in the right direction. My problem like I mentioned in my previous post, is that it feels to good to be true. And without any statistics to prove me otherwise it probably is. After all, if it was a rip-roaring success, I’m sure we would have wall to wall media coverage of it. In fact, all political parties would be pushing for it to become mandatory. So I find the relative silence telling.

I remember saying before that I feel like a lot of political policy is more marketing than actual credible solutions and this feels like just that. A bit unfair as I don’t know anyone that has used the service so can’t speak to how effective it is but peel back the layers and it again feels to good to be true. Access to physiotherapist and counselling. Just those two services I would like to see more in-depth evidence of this because NHS waiting lists are through the roof, especially for counselling. I feel this is “counselling” with the speech marks firmly in place i.e. the work coaches are probably moonlighting as life coaches. If I’m wrong, I’ll quite happily hold my hands up. The service does say referrals are made to local counselling providers, so I guess we have to take that on face value.

My other question being is Workwell the future of access to Work considering that a lot of claims are being either reviewed and reduced or funding is totally stopped or claim are being denied on application? It sounds like a front-loaded scheme that has successor vibes written all over it. And look if it is a thorough and person-centered as they claim it is then wonderful. But some of us have seen these kinds of schemes before and the person in the person-centered seems to be forgotten. I do have to stress as I didn’t at the start that this is currently a voluntary scheme.

And the failures of access to work play a key role in why such a scheme, whilst from the outside looks good, will ultimately fail going forward. They talk about help negotiating reasonable adjustments with employers but what if these adjustments for equipment, staff or anything else requiring funding? If they can’t get access to work all the initial assumed good work has failed. Until they fix the broken access to work scheme additional schemes like this and disability confident are doomed to fail, In addition to this obliterating the welfare system and cuts in social care create the perfect storm of leaving disabled people without any kind of safety night.

Nice idea but disabled people are long past the stage of needing nice ideas. We’ve reached critical and we need solutions.