Focus on employment

One of the campaign’s main goals is access to meaningful and accessible jobs, free from discrimination and prejudice, for Disabled people looking for work.

For that to happen, we need a Government committed to the full inclusion of Disabled people in employment as part of their ‘Get Britain Working’ agenda.

Inclusion means employers who will employ Disabled people and support for Disabled people to start and stay in work.

Disability Confident

This week, the Government announced an ‘overhaul’ of its flagship Disability Confident scheme.

Launched in 2016, the scheme aims to get more Disabled people into work by encouraging and supporting employers to employ Disabled people.

So far, the scheme hasn’t worked. Employers can be accredited without employing a single Disabled person. And – strikingly – there’s no evidence that accredited employers have hired more Disabled people or improved workplace experiences than those not in the scheme.

Disappointingly, the ‘overhaul’ is a missed opportunity to fix this. With a focus on stronger encouragement rather than targets, it still lacks the teeth needed to achieve what it set out to achieve.

Access to Work

Proposals for the future of the Access to Work grant scheme, which provides practical and financial support to help Disabled people to get and stay in work, are due in the spring.

While the formal consultation period for the proposals has now ended, the Campaign for Disability Justice is involved with and supporting the Access to Work Collective’s influencing and response to the proposals.

Given the Government’s commitment to ‘Get Britain Working’, we’re hoping to see a big boost to the scheme, but given current cuts to Access to Work awards, the opposite may prove to be the case.

Keeping up the pressure

We’ll continue our collective work to secure access to meaningful and accessible employment for Disabled people seeking work.

If you want to see the full inclusion of Disabled people in the workplace, join the campaign and encourage the people in your life to do the same.

Thumbnail attribution: Disabled and Here. Images are used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.