Conservative MP Sarah Wollaston argues for individualised support with employment for people with mental health problems and less coercion.
In this Guardian article Sarah Wollaston MP suggests that ministers should also use the ‘breathing space’, resulting from the delay in implementation of PIP, to examine the continuing problems of assessment and appeal for those with other disabilities such as mental illness.
Drawing on her own experience she describes the anxieties and pitfalls of trying to resuming work, itself part of and sometimes essential to recovery – “not just because of the financial gain but for social identity and contact, structured time and a sense of personal achievement”.
Though she accepts that sometimes people need a push to get back into work, she does not believe that this should be coercive or punitive. As an example she cites accounts by her constituents who find work capability assessments to be humiliating, not helped by “longstanding political narrative from both sides of the political divide that they are "shirkers not workers" or a drain on Britain's "hardworking people".
“If the timing of a return to work is wrong and there is no support at either end of that journey, it is more likely to end in failure, or worse, deterioration and further loss of confidence. I was fortunate to have that support from my family, but if that is lacking it needs to come from elsewhere.
The challenge is to find a way of assessment that does not force people back to work when it's not in their best interest. For the variable, subjective but debilitating symptoms of mental illness, a tick-box process is doomed to fail unless it takes account of the fuller picture.”
She cites one approach, Individual Placement and Support, which has been shown to work well for people with long-term and severe mental illness in a number of countries.
Disability Rights UK's new report 'Taking Control of Employment Support' advocates putting support into the hands of disabled people so that they can make their own choices about what they need.