Stop sanctions if you’re serious about improving welfare-to-work support, says Mind
The Work and Pensions Select Committee have published a report on welfare-to-work support.
Responding to this, Tom Pollard, Policy and Campaigns Manager at Mind, said:
“We welcome this report as we know that many people with mental health problems who are currently out of work struggle to get the right support to help them back into appropriate jobs. It’s clear that the Government’s flagship back-to-work scheme, the Work Programme, is not working for people with mental health problems, with the latest statistics revealing less than 9 per cent of people with mental health problems are successfully finding work through this scheme."
“We have long been calling for the expansion of specialist, voluntary support along with better health provision for people with mental health problems and it is good to see these recommendations backed by this independent committee. However we are concerned that the Government will ignore this advice and continue to provide generic support for the hundreds of thousands of people who are out of work because of their mental health, under the threat of sanctions. We know that this approach is not working for people with mental health problems and is instead putting people under a lot of pressure, causing great anxiety, and making them less likely to be able to get back into work. If the Government is serious about getting more disabled people into employment, they need to focus on support, not sanctions.”