Test which assesses us as fit for work: Fit for purpose?
It has been two and a half years since Incapacity Benefit was replaced by Employment and Support Allowance. While most of people’s attention during that time has been on people claiming the benefit for the first time, there have been millions of people still claiming the old Incapacity Benefit and wondering what will happen to them and when. With two and a half years to think about the best way to support those people, you would hope that a Government of any colour would have had time to develop a proper plan for transition.
Sadly, for the million people with mental illness on IB, we can’t be too confident of that. People on IB need three things: a test that really recognises ability or inability to work, tailored support to get into work and changes to employer attitudes. So far, we haven’t seen much progress in any of these areas.
Yes, there has been a ‘pilot’ of the test process to decide who on IB will get ESA and who will get put on to the lower Jobseekers’ Allowance, designed for people who are not ill and fully able to work. Yet this ‘pilot’ happened just months after an independent review found major flaws in this test and before any of the review’s recommendations could be put into practice. Chris Grayling, Minister for Employment has been confidently asserting that the ‘pilot’ shows a quarter of people on IB should be on JSA and able to work straight away. But many health charities like Rethink Mental Illness know that the test is often about as accurate as tossing a coin. At the moment, just under half of decisions are overturned at appeal, so a slightly weighted coin wouldn’t be far off.
Once someone is moved from IB to ESA or JSA, the chances of getting the right support don’t appear much improved either. The previous Government’s Pathways programme simply didn’t work for people with mental illness, according to independent research. There doesn’t seem much chance that the new ‘Single Work Programme’ will learn the lessons from the millions put into Pathways. It looks set to still be dominated by generic employment providers, who know little about how to support people with mental illness into work, coupled with JobCentre staff, who themselves say they don’t know enough about mental illness. Despite our attempts at Rethink Mental Illness to engage with JCP, there still isn’t really good quality training on mental illness for these staff, despite the fact that 40% of IB claimants have a mental health condition.
Amidst these wasted opportunities, there are some ‘green shoots’ of progress. First the new mental health strategy, No Health without Mental Health, puts stigma as one of the Government’s top priorities. We have yet to see this priority translated into action, but this is the result of years of campaigning by Rethink Mental Illness , our members and the whole mental health community. Second, for the first time this weekend, Chris Grayling did acknowledge in a Telegraph piece, that ‘many people’ on IB won’t be able to work and they should expect unconditional, ongoing support from the state. This is in stark contrast to his comments a month ago on Newsnight, after which we and others urged him to change his tune.
Perhaps the lesson here is that when we all band together, we can get Government to listen to what really matters, even in the absence of a coherent plan. We should be proud of our green shoots so far and ready to take more action. At Rethink Mental Ilness, we are supporting the The Hardest Hit campaign to hold this Government to account on the promise of 'unconditional, ongoing support’. Will you join in?
Have you been asked to a reassessment test?
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