Access to work

Seven out of 10 employers say they know nothing about a £50 million government financial support scheme, Access to Work (ATW)1 ,that assists employers to take on and retain disabled employees. The government could be spending as little as £37,500 per year publicising ATW and threatening employment prospects for over one million disabled job seekers.

 

With over 600,000 vacancies at job centres and employment at a 20-year high, RNIB (in a new report, ‘Access to Work for Disabled People’, on behalf of the 13-charity-strong Disability Employment Coalition, DEC) says the government won’t say how much it spends on advertising and promoting ATW.

 

Stakeholder Response: Royal National Institute for the Blind

 

 

Steve Winyard, RNIB’s chairman of the Disability Employment Coalition, said: “The government should be banging a drum for ATW. It’s an incredibly valuable scheme that has the potential to support tens of thousands more disabled people into work. Clearly when a disabled person is in work everybody wins especially the Treasury.  So why aren’t the government investing more money into publicising ATW? 

 

“The government is known to spend millions on advertising, spending more money than any other organisation in this country. It should be aware of the power of publicity and how an effective increase in ATW’s publicity budget would encourage more employers to take advantage of the financial support it offers. The government has said it wants to see more people coming off benefits. It has also said the ATW budget is always spent. Well surely this is confirmation of a high demand for ATW. The government may not have anticipated this high demand but it makes the point, by increasing the ATW budget and expanding the scheme, more disabled people come off benefits and into work.”

 

Stakeholder Response: Disabilities Trust