Access to Work News Special
This week there were a lot of stories in the media and on disability blogs and websites about Access to Work. This coincided with the last of 4 evidence sessions on Access to Work to the Department of Work and Pensions Select Committee in Parliament.
The Access to Work scheme is 20 this year and I wouldn’t have been able to work with out it. Access to Work provides equipment and support for disabled people to enable them to work. For me it has provided assistive technology for my work computer. a large print key board, magnification equipment and when I need it transport support. If Access to Work didn’t exist most employers would find it incredibly difficult or impossible to employ many disabled people.
The Access to Work scheme is a great “social model” response to the problems disabled people face in the work place, but it has never been given the publicity it deserves, it has never been administered properly and never given enough funding. But what is very clear is that if this and successive governments want to help disabled people to find and stay in work, they need to support the Access to Work scheme not cut it or make it more difficult to use. Yet this simple fact just doesn’t ever seem to be grasped by so many politicians and civil servants.
Below are a number of links to different takes on the Access to Work crisis as one article puts it.
The Limping Chicken Access to Work crisis
Susan Scott Parker blog on Access to Work
BBC report into Access to Work changes denying disabled people vital support
See Hear report into Access to Work changes affecting deaf people and those self employed
Article in the Daily Express about actress and business woman Julie Fernandez’s Access to Work problems
