Sayce review accentuates the positive

Radar chief executive Liz Sayce is completing a review of employment services offered to disabled people. She’s determined, she tells Sunil Peck, that it looks forward to opportunities

Liz Sayce sees her independent review as the opportunity to put the aspirations and wishes of disabled people keen to work at the heart of specialist support.

The review of the services delivered via Work Choice, the Work Programme and Access to Work draws on existing research. But she’s been talking to disabled people’s organisations, charities, unions and employers since January.

She says that a number of issues have arisen around Access to Work, including raising awareness of the scheme beyond larger companies and the public sector.

“A lot of other people have never heard of it, particularly small businesses. So we’re looking at ways in which that support can be better known.”

She’s also identified a need to raise awareness of Access to Work among health professionals. She cites the case of someone on a spinal injury unit where occupational therapists talked to him about opportunities to sky-dive and walk to the North Pole but who said nothing about support to work.

“The other big theme is that there’s evidence from the learning disability and mental health fields that seems to show that for an increasing number of people, the best chance of employment is if you’re supported to start thinking about getting a job in the beginning rather than going through a lengthy series of stepping stones like training programmes, college courses or sheltered experiences. We’ve come across interesting examples where people have been able to do work placements where, rather than going through a standard interview process, people have tried a job knowing that if they do it well there’s a job at the end of it.

“Some major employers have offered the experience of practising interviews and CV skills in the workplace rather than it being done in a college or disability organisation.”

But with unemployment rising, is it realistic to expect that disabled people are in a good position to gain and retain work – even if they do have better support?

“The mistake that was made during previous recessions was that nobody did anything in preparation for the upturn in terms of disability so disabled people lost their jobs and didn’t get them back. So it’s worth trying to improve the system so that as jobs become available, disabled people have got a really good chance of getting them. That’s one of the reasons I’ve been looking at apprenticeships and the business sector which are areas that are potentially growing.

“Investment is difficult at a time like this but I think that some of the ideas we’re looking at are cost-effective. For example, there’s research that shows that for every pound spent on Access to Work, the Exchequer recoups around £1.44. It’s about using money well to enable disabled people to participate fully.”