MIDDLESBROUGH
EMPLOYMENT STRATEGY for PEOPLE with DISABILITIES
2008 - 2010
Prepared by Debra Parkes
contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY......
Our Vision for Employment......
Baseline Data and Information......
Strategic Links – National, Regional and Local......
Key Barriers to Employment and Solutions to Overcome Barriers – ‘What Works’
Local Provision......
Realising the Vision......
Conclusion......
Positive Case Studies......
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......
Appendix 1 – Action Plan for Delivery......
APPENDIX 2 – Specialist Employment Advice......
Appendix 3......
PRO-FORMA FOR THE INITIAL ASSESSMENT......
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1.1This Strategy has been developed and produced by Middlesbrough Council Social Care and includes information from a range of key partners. The aim is to look at the needs of people with disabilities in Middlesbrough and how they can best be supported into meaningful, sustainable employment. The focus for Social Care teams will be to support those furthest away from the labour market, particularly people who are under Fair Access to Care (FAC’s) and within secondary mental health services. The majority of these people will have been long term unemployed for over 5 years and need to have dedicated support and actions to enter and remain in employment.
Local surveys from Social Care teams indicate that people with disabilities do want some form of part time or full time work. One of the key driving principles for this strategy is that people with disabilities have the same rights and choices for employment as any other person, with a focus upon achieving equality of opportunity.
The 2006 Government Green Paper[1] reinforces the critical role of work in our society:
‘For individuals and families, the benefits of work are clear. Work is the best route out of poverty. It strengthens independence and dignity. It builds family aspirations, fosters greater social inclusion and can improve an individual’s health and well-being.’
Our vision is that people with disabilities are able to access employment opportunities and this Strategy will focus on helping and supporting the hardest to reach groups to achieve this aspiration. Middlesbrough Social Care and health teams have almost 2,000 local people under FAC’s and of working age (2008). There are 681 people with mental health disabilities, 641 people with learning disabilities and 581 people with severe physical disabilities.
In compiling this Strategy it is crucial to understand that whilst people with disabilities often find it more difficult to enter and sustain employment, everyone is an individual and each person may require limited support or more intensive additional support. This Strategy will support all people with a disability living in Middlesbrough to enter employment but the focus will be on the most severely disabled.
Nationally the number of people on Incapacity Benefit (IB) has more than trebled since 1979. In the past 12 years however, there has been a dramatic shift in the illness for which people receive IB: 40% now claim for mental health problems compared with just 20% in 1995.
The key message is that people with, mental health, learning disabilities and physical disabilities want to work. Within Social Care it is our visionfor as many people as possible to enter paid sustainable employment. Employment is not just good for the individual but also improves the local economy and competitiveness.
Employment for people with disabilities will provide income, independence, social identity and most importantly social inclusion. In order to achieve employment, and improve individual health and well being it will be necessary to embrace a fundamental culture change from benefit dependency to engaging in the world of work.
This Strategy fits with the National Government agenda to get 80% of working age population into employment. Middlesbrough currently has only 65.1% employment rate compared to the North East of 70.3%. In order to achieve this national target many people in Middlesbrough with disabilities will need to be supported into employment and this strategy will consider what works in order to do this.
In order to deliver employment opportunities for people with disabilities a number of local partners need to work together. The responsibility to ensure that people with disabilities can enter the workforce is a shared partner and community based responsibility – not simply for Health and Social Care. Social care alone will be unable to provide the necessary employment opportunities and a range of local partners will be involved. These local partners will include Jobcentre Plus, voluntary organisations, Primary Care Trust (PCT), employers, Learning and Skills Council (LSC) and private sector providers.
1.2The base line data for Middlesbrough shows that from a population of 137,000, over 10,000 people are claiming Incapacity Benefit (IB) and most have been unemployed over two years. This is a conservative figure for the number of people who need intensive support as some people have not paid contributions to get IB and will be on Income support with Disability Living Allowance. This figure is twice the number of Job Seekers Allowance.
Mental health is now recognised as the primary cause of incapacity. At least 42% of IB claimants cite mental health problems as the main reasons that are unable to work. The Condition Management Programme (CMP) who work across the Tees Valley, as part of the Pathways to Work options say that figure is nearer to 80 per cent.
It is crucial that this Strategy needs to take account of the local Labour Market and the local economy in Middlesbrough and the local travel to work areas. In order for people with disabilities to enter employment there needs to be local employers to take them on. Whilst finding suitable employers is an area that can be developed by the specialist employment team within Social Care, it needs to be recognised that currently there would not be enough vacancies for the 10,000 people claiming IB in Middlesbrough to enter the labour market. Part of the solution to finding sustainable vacancies will be to develop local sustainable social enterprises and increase opportunities for self-employment.
In some ward areas in Middlesbrough such as Middlehaven 24% of the working age population are claiming Incapacity Benefit. The stark fact is that after 2 years on IB people are more likely to die or retire than re-enter employment. People on IB are not required to actively look for work and many will simply accept that they will never be able to work. The proposals within this strategy are important to be put into practise as the longer an individual is on benefits, the less likely they are to return to work. The current benefit system encourages people to remain on benefits by increasing the level of Incapacity Benefit (IB) payments the longer people claim.
Increasing economic activity and getting more people back into fulfilling work is not only important to the individual but also vital for the long-term competitiveness of our local economy.
1.3This Strategy fits with the national, regional and local strategies, which have identified the need to reduce worklessness and support people with disabilities into employment. These strategic links and partnerships are detailed in the report and include the following:
- Regional Economic Strategy (RES)
- Regional Employability Framework (REF)
- Middlesbrough’s vision of ‘Raising Hope’
- Middlesbrough Community Strategy
- Local Strategic Partnership LSP – Theme groups of Health and Social Care and Economic Development.
- Local Area Agreement 2007- 2010
- Valuing People
- Local Economic and Local Employment Strategy
- Tees Valley City Region
- LSC review of learning
- Green Paper on Employment
- Local implementation Team (LIT) review of mental health day services. The focus for the day services will be around being more proactive and getting service users back into employment, where possible. The service will be much more focused on social inclusion and moving people onto recovery.
This Strategy is intended to identify the barriers to employment and offer solutions to overcome them. It identifies what works locally and nationally and highlights the need to have local dedicated employment activities and provision for people with disabilities.
Other important changes will influence the benefit culture with the introduction of the Employment Support Allowance ESA, replacing IB in Oct 2008
In December 2007 the regional Valuing People Support Team asked the Middlesbrough Learning Disabilities Open Partnership Board what should be their number one priority to make things better. Local people felt that ‘making sure more people with a learning disability get a proper paid job was their number one priority’.
There are anumber ofbarriers to people with disabilities entering and sustaining employment. Some of the key barriers are listed below:
1.4 Key Barriers:
Benefits / fear of family loss of benefits
Lack of suitable vacancies
Low confidence/ self esteem
Lack of qualifications /skills
Stigma and discrimination
Poor labour market information – how to access employers
Lack of coordination/partnership working between referral agencies and providers
1.5 What Works
The key to this Strategy is identifying ‘What Works’. The solutions are detailed in the Strategy and include the following:
Ensuring individuals have impartial benefit advice prior to starting work and ensuring that people retain theirDisability Living Allowance once in work. Advice can be provided to helpmanage their benefits/tax credits to ensure that they do not suffer a reduction in income.
One to one advice with a specialist, personal adviser (job coach) who supports the individual into employment. Initially Person Centred Planning can motivate and encourage personal job aspirations and offer a route into employment. The job coach can provide access to employers and help to sustain the individual once in work. The job coach will work with the individual and family to build up a profile of what the person can do and find employment tailored to theirskills and strengths.
A dedicated mainstream specialist job coach support team is essential to work one to one and will be set up within Social Care to undertake this work. Crucially their activities are not time bound but the expectation will be that as individuals progress they will require less intensive support.
Early intervention has been shown to work, both for young people in transitions and for people in employment but with mental health problems. For people in work initiatives such as Mental Health First Aid can help with early support and intervention and help people to remain in employment.
Other local provision such as Pathways to Work has had a positive effect for new IB claimantslooking for work. The option of Condition Management Programme can help individuals with health care support.
Support from local Disability advisers within JCP to access employment has worked well. However this programme is to support new benefit claimants and not the majority of people that are known to Social and Health Care staff. People can volunteer onto the Pathways programme but evidence from JCP has shown that very few do.
The introduction of Return to work credits (£40 per week for 52 weeks) has been a great financial incentive but these activities still requires specialist local job brokers to find employment opportunities.
Access to Work and In Work Support is very valuable once an individual has found work.
For some people Supported employmentfor some via Social Enterprise is the mostappropriate employment option. This can offer flexible work whilst earning a wage.
Job Carving has worked in other areas and is one option that Middlesbrough Council is considering to increase diversity and social integration.
Local partnership working and named referral to specialists Voluntary Community Sector has proved to be very successful. However much of this local provision by VCS is tied to external funding and is often only annually.
New innovative ways of helping people sustain employment can be considered such as using Direct Payments to fund support, which has worked in other areas.
In some local areas such as Hartlepool, Intermediate Labour Market (ILM) has worked successfully in skill shortage areas such as construction but as this pays the actual wage for the job it is therefore very expensive to deliver.
All of these initiative and activities have and continue to work as can be seen from Lanarkshire example but they take time and cannot be achieved from stop start short term funding and initiatives.
Local examples of how individuals have personally overcome barriers to employment are highlighted in the Positive case studies in the strategy.
- Local Provision
As part of this Strategy Social Care has produced an easy reference handout detailing local provision and this is updated regularly. A range of providers and Job Brokershave been running projects in Middlesbrough in 2007/08 such as theNorthern Way Workless pilot – New Opportunities at Shaw Trust, Broker NE, Wise Workable but unfortunately these contracts are short-term and annual ending in March 2008. A range of other funding such as European/NRF/DAF also ended in March 2008.
Area Based Initiatives (ABI) have contributed greatly and supported people into employment, however, they do not have specialist and detailed knowledge to workwith thehardest to help. They have provided a good generalist service but from April 2008 they will become a gateways/ signposting service referring onto provision, which means another vital vacancy finding service for people with disabilities will be lost.
- Realising Vision /Conclusion
Social and health care staff are expert at engagement with people and have built up their trust and confidence and can then help to support clients to consider work and refer to specialist employment job coaches / advisers into employment.
The new specialist Employment team will be able to support people into employment but will need extra financial resources-in order to do this. The employment support teams will directly contribute to the new Government National Targets for people with learning disabilities and mental health disabilities. Flexible funding from sources such as Working Neighbourhoods Fund WNF will be vital to give the intensive support that is required to achieve sustainable employment for these groups of people.
Social and Health care teams do not have the capacity to support all people with disabilities into employment but will need to work via a partnership approach with key local partners through the Local strategic Partnership (LSP). Partners would include Job Centre Plus, Voluntary and Care Sector such as Mind, Citizens Advice Bureau. Some work has been done to look at the benefits for the clients of support from a number of local specialist offering careers guidance, providing ‘job ready ‘ skills, pre employment training, finding jobs and support in employment but this pathway or journey into employment needs to be easily accessible to individuals and not complex as it is currently.
Internal and external partners are key to the success of this strategy and part of future collaborative working will be to identify how we can use and pool resources more effectively given diminishing external funding sources. Partners will need to agree the Action Plan to enable clear targets to be set and the Action Plan will be a means of checking progress and monitoring. The Strategy and Action plan will also look at qualitative information and ‘soft data’ to measure individuals progress and help to reduce barriers to employment. This Strategy and Action Plan are intended to be ‘live’ documents and will be monitored and updated quarterly.These documents will also be used to inform Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) teams on progression and sustainability in employment in Middlesbrough.
The Social Care Employment team will continue the monitoring and recording of people with disabilities sustaining work that was part of the Local Public Service Agreement (LPSA) 2006/08. Through data monitoring and recording an accurate baseline has been provided and with this information we will continue to work to improve opportunities for people to enter into employment. By April 2008 the new LAA framework will have 35 improvement targets based on the National Indicator set for 2008 to 2011. Targets 146 and 150 (details of these are in the appendix) will become part of the delivery plan for Sustainable Community Strategy and we will use the new National Indicators to improve entry and support into employment for people with disabilities.
The Social Care employment vision for people with disabilities is complementary to Middlesbrough Council’s Scrutiny recommendations from the Worklessness Action Plan Scrutiny report (March 2006). The recommendations are as follows: