23
Examination of witnesses
Hannah Sheehan, Jennifer Heigham and Elizabeth Franey.
Q69 The Chair: Welcome to this session in our inquiry into the transition from education to employment for young disabled people. We have representatives from the government departments with us today. I will start by asking them to introduce themselves.
Hannah Sheehan: I am the director responsible for careers in the Department for Education. It is great to be here. Thank you.
Elizabeth Franey: I am a deputy director in the Department for Education, and I work in the SEND and alternative provision directorate.
Jennifer Heigham: I am deputy director in the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department of Health and Social Care as part of a joint directorate on health, disability and work.
Q70 The Chair: Thank you for coming. Some of the questions might end up being answered by just one of the departments, but there is overlap, and getting departments to work together is one of the challenges. Do not feel that you have to answer if it is really not relevant to what you do.
The first question starts with the DfE. In our inquiry, we have not always been able to find what additional help there is for young people with disabilities, across the curriculum and in careers education and careers guidance separately. One challenge in reading the briefing or the background information is that sometimes you cannot be clear whether the extra help is for children with statements or everybody who a school decides is in the SEND category. That is quite difficult to find out.
We may backtrack, but if we start from the position that there is a careers education programme and a careers guidance programme, what extra help is there for the group of young people we are talking about today?
Elizabeth Franey: I will start on SEND and then pass to Hannah. It is really clear that education settings, schools and colleges, have to make adaptations to meet the needs of their pupils, whether they are SEND support pupils or EHCP pupils. That applies across the curriculum and is about focusing on their needs and how those can be met in school. There should not be a distinction there.
For EHCP young people, there are, of course, additional statutory provisions, such as preparation for adulthood and embedding that throughout their school and college career but particularly from year 9. That kind of tailored support should be available for all children with additional needs, whether they have an EHCP or not.
The Chair: Give us some examples of what that might be, just so we understand it better.
Elizabeth Franey: On the curriculum side, schools and colleges will focus on the needs of the child rather than what piece of paper they have. Do they need additional support in the classroom? Do they need support outside the classroom? They are required to focus on need rather than diagnosis or pieces of paper. We would not expect a huge difference between what they get from their school or college, from the SENCO or from their teachers, based on that piece of paper. Do you want to talk a bit about the careers angle there, Hannah?
Hannah Sheehan: What Liz just said about focusing on the need of the child is really important in careers. The main framework that schools use for their careers guidance and support is the Gatsby benchmarks, which are really clear that it should be centred on the needs of a child. We have put in place the infrastructure and support for schools and colleges through the careers hubs. There are 44 of those across the country, and they offer specialist training and support on special educational needs and disabilities. There is a community of improvement for inclusion, which connects those hubs across the country so that we can share good practice and make sure we are learning from the best. We think it is there, but it is just a case of developing that further and making sure that practice is consistent.
The Chair: Are you saying that if I had a child who had a statement or who was considered to have special educational needs, they would get a careers officer with a specialist background and specialist knowledge? Are you saying that, in the school, the careers teacher would have had some training in that specialist knowledge? I am just trying to tease out exactly what happens in practice. I can see that what you said is very aspirational, but what actually happens? Is my child going to get the extra support that is meant to be there? I just do not have a feel as to how embedded that is across the system at the moment.
Hannah Sheehan: How it works in practice is that the careers leader, who is the lead on careers for all young people in the school, will be trained in SEND but will work really closely with the SENCO, the special educational needs co-ordinator, who is really the SEND expert in the school. Together they will decide what the right package is for the young person.
The Chair: What is that package? I am still not quite sure. Am I right in assuming that all that sounds good, but in some schools it is just not happening and they are not getting any extra specialised support? Is that fair or unfair?
Hannah Sheehan: It is fair to say that it will be different across the country. Some schools do it brilliantly. To give you a practical example, in Liverpool they have rolled out some virtual reality headsets for SEND pupils, who will wear those. They are programmed for an employer route or going to college, so the pupils will see what it is like to get on the bus, get off the bus, arrive at the employer or the college. Then they follow a worker round for the day. That has been shown to really improve their confidence so that they can go out and meet an actual employer or go to a college in person.
There are things like that going on that we think are brilliant and we want to share, but you are right and it is fair to say that that will not be the same in every school. That is what we are committed to improving.
The Chair: The careers adviser, rather than the careers teacher or the careers education programme, does not get an awful lot of it. On the whole, it is one appointment before 16 and one after. Does a child with additional needs get more, and are they guaranteed some specialist guidance such as a careers guidance officer who has been trained to support people with additional needs, or are they just getting somebody who may be very good but does not have that degree of specialism?
Hannah Sheehan: They get more, and they get it earlier. Liz might want to come in here. Certainly if you have an EHCP, you would get more and you would get it earlier. Who exactly is supporting that young person will depend on the school. Schools quite often buy in specialist support, but that would generally be specialist careers support rather than someone who is a specialist in careers and SEND. So there is still more work to do in making sure that that is in place consistently.
Elizabeth Franey: I would reiterate what I said earlier: that the SEND code of practice is really clear that preparation for adulthood has to be embedded throughout the child’s journey through school, for SEND support children as well as EHCP children. As I said, there is a particular focus from year 9 onwards for EHCP. We do not prescribe who should be providing that support, but it is a statutory duty.
The Chair: They have to have the resource.
Elizabeth Franey: They do.
Q71 Lord Willis of Knaresborough: I have a great deal of sympathy for you in trying to answer some of these questions. This is an area that I have worked in for a long time, as a former head of a very large secondary school in Leeds and a pioneer of the integration of children with special needs and disabilities into mainstream education.
I am quite confused. Take, for instance, the actual cost of delivering the central careers service into schools and the Chair’s recent question about whether there was extra provision for children with additional needs. I cannot see how you do this. A recent piece of research by the University of Derby said that, in 2019, we spent approximately £159 per person on the central delivery of careers education, and yet last year we paid £65.
That is quite a reduction in the actual amount of money, and I do not see how the careers service itself, or indeed the schools themselves, can possibly do with that sort of resource what I am sure you have every ambition to do. Is the University of Derby wrong? I have not seen any figures from you as to what we are actually spending. Perhaps you could tell us the department’s figures for how much per child is spent on specialist careers advice.
Hannah Sheehan: Thank you for the question. It is a really important point. We do not break down the money we spend on careers per person in that way.
Lord Willis of Knaresborough: I understand that.
Hannah Sheehan: We fund the Careers & Enterprise Company with up to £32.5 million in 2023-24. If you were to share that out per school, that would be about £5,000 per school, but that is not how the support is constructed. It is designed to be national infrastructure to support every school to support every pupil.
I would also like to mention the National Careers Service, which provides in-person support for adults in priority groups, and disabled people are a priority group. If you are between 19 and 25, you can access that in-person support. That works out at £115 per person.
Q72 Lord Willis of Knaresborough: I would like to keep this to before 18, rather than 18-plus, but thanks for those figures. You must have a per-person figure for it, because you do it for every other aspect of education. It would be great if the Committee could have that. You know the number of students. They are from year 9 to year 11, so there are three years to cover there. It would be useful to have the figure as to how much, on average, we were spending per child. I find the University of Derby’s figures quite alarming, if they are true. I have no reason to disbelieve them. The question is how it has come to those points.
Secondly, you mentioned the Careers & Enterprise Company. I am not clear about what it is actually doing, particularly for young people with additional needs. You are saying that the money that it gets comes out of the central block of resource, so it has to spend that. Again, I do not know how it interfaces with schools. I will just give you one example, because I could go on for ever here.
In terms of school leaders, you have somebody in charge of careers. It is a statutory responsibility for a school to have them. Does the resource for that come from the centre, or from the school itself? You are saying that that person is crucial. In fact, they have a legal responsibility, and yet they do not have to be qualified in any shape or form to actually carry out those duties. Is there not something sadly missing there? Is that not something that the department should seize and say that it is an educational priority for people to be properly qualified to carry out this incredibly responsible job?
Hannah Sheehan: There are a few questions there, so I will try to take them one at a time, but tell me if I miss anything.
Very briefly on how the CEC, the Careers & Enterprise Company, works with schools, it will support a careers hub, which will be in a local area. The hub is essentially there to connect schools and colleges with employers, because we think that if you introduce young people to the world of work, they have better work outcomes. That is primarily why they are there. The hub then supports the careers leader in the school. The careers leader is really the co-ordinator of what goes on, but a school brings in people with specialist qualifications in careers to provide the careers support. Someone who was not qualified in careers would be providing that.
Lord Willis of Knaresborough: They do not have to do that, though. Unless I am totally wrong here, there is no requirement at all for a school to bring in somebody with any specialist qualification. I could be appointed tomorrow. Sadly, I did in some cases. I did not appoint myself, because I would not be very good at it.
Hannah Sheehan: I am sure you would be very good at it. It is certainly something that we can take away and have a look at. I am very happy to do that. You asked about the cost per pupil, which we do not have but we can certainly follow up. As you say, that is not how we conceive of the careers support, but we can come back to you with how it would break down if it was viewed that way.
Q73 Lord Willis of Knaresborough: That would be great. Thank you very much indeed.
Could I ask Liz one quick question before I depart into my silent regime? You talked about the Gatsby benchmarks, and you mentioned with great aplomb that that was the way in which we gauged high quality. I have been looking to see whether anywhere in the Gatsby benchmarks they are consistent across different schools or different authorities, and I find out that schools can respond to the benchmarks in any way they can. There is no national requirement whatever for them to meet certain standards. How can you have Gatsby benchmarks, which are a national requirement, when there are no national standards?
Hannah Sheehan: That question is for me, too.
Lord Willis of Knaresborough: Sorry. I am not getting at you particularly.
Hannah Sheehan: No, they are really good questions. I am happy with them. The Gatsby benchmarks are deliberately a self-assessment tool. We thought long and hard about that, and we did it that way because we did not want to drive a culture of tick-boxing or schools saying that they were doing something that they were not doing. That is why we have set it up in that way. The careers hubs provide challenge and support to the school. It is also possible for schools to bring in someone to assess and give them feedback on what they are doing. I agree with you that there is no close regulation of the benchmarks, but we have set them up that way because we think it is the most effective way to encourage schools to improve their own practice.
Lord Willis of Knaresborough: How do you know it is working?
Hannah Sheehan: How do we know they are the right benchmarks?
Lord Willis of Knaresborough: How do you know it is working?
Hannah Sheehan: Schools track on a tool called Compass, so we can see how schools are doing against the benchmarks. We track the improvement on that, and we can see that it is going up over time.
Lord Willis of Knaresborough: Thanks very much indeed.
Lord Porter of Spalding: Are any going down?
Hannah Sheehan: I am sure that individuals may well be going down, but I do not have that in front of me.
Lord Porter of Spalding: When you go back and check your database, can you let us know how many are going the other way? If this is based on a self-assessment regime, we need to know that people are accurately self-assessing. If they are all going up, clearly self-assessment is not working, because nothing in this world is pitch perfect and always increases in service delivery. There must be some going backwards.
Hannah Sheehan: We can take it away. I do not know whether we will get the breakdown like that, but we can certainly look into it, because that is a really good point.
Q74 The Chair: This is a really interesting area. I can see why you have done it, because it gets away from the traditional DfE model of telling everyone what to do. I completely understand that, but it therefore risks falling on to the other side. Am I right in thinking that the department publishes performance against Gatsby benchmarks? Yes. You are back into the mess. You would rightly claim that the department Ministers would say, ‘We’re very pleased to announce we’ve achieved X against the Gatsby benchmarks’.
That does not match up with saying to the schools, ‘Take it easy. These are just there to help you. It’s a self-evaluation tool’, because they know you are publishing results against it. First, that changes the relationship. Secondly, when you publish results against the Gatsby benchmarks, you are not saying anything, because the answer could be, ‘But the other 50% are using a completely different set of criteria that’s actually better’.
Am I right in thinking, therefore, that Ofsted would not comment on the school’s performance against the Gatsby benchmarks, given that it is not compulsory and only a self‑assessment tool?
Hannah Sheehan: It is a self-assessment tool, but it is compulsory, in that it is in our statutory guidance on careers.[1] It is something that Ofsted looks for when it is inspecting. There is that external judgment and assessment of what a school is doing. There are then routes for when a school is not doing it. You would start with the school’s complaints procedure, but in the statutory guidance there is a Secretary of State intervention power.
The Chair: In what way is it not compulsory, if it is inspected by Ofsted?
Hannah Sheehan: No, it is compulsory to use them.[2]
The Chair: What is the optional bit?
Hannah Sheehan: There is no optional bit.[3] I think the question was about who is assessing day to day how a school is performing, and that is the school.
The Chair: You mean that they judge their own performance, not that they judge whether they are an appropriate set of criteria. You are not saying to them, ‘Here’s a set of criteria you could work towards’. You are saying, ‘You’ve got to work towards this set of criteria, but you judge how well you are doing them’.
Hannah Sheehan: Yes, but you are self-assessing. Yes, that is exactly it.
Q75 Lord Carter of Coles: How does Ofsted inspect then? I do not understand. What is the standard that Ofsted is inspecting against?
Hannah Sheehan: It is looking at it as part of its personal development judgement. In the Ofsted inspection handbook, it sets out some guidance for inspectors. I shall read: ‘Schools prepare pupils for future success in education, employment or training. They use the Gatsby benchmarks … to develop and improve their careers provision and enable a range of education and training providers to speak to pupils’; et cetera. There are a few examples. So there is guidance for inspectors on what they are looking for and statutory guidance on schools for what we expect. The point I was trying to make earlier was that it is primarily the schools saying how good they are against that framework.
Lord Carter of Coles: Forgive me hanging on to this, but how does Ofsted then report that if it looks through it and says, ‘Actually, this is not performing’?
Hannah Sheehan: It would flag that in its inspection report.
Lord Porter of Spalding: How would it know that the school is not performing if all it relies on is the headteacher saying, ‘Yes, we’ve checked ourselves against this and we’re doing great. See you later, Ofsted inspector’? There is no verification process.
The Chair: Do they only do the quantitative stuff and not the qualitative stuff? Some of the Gatsby benchmarks are quantitative, such as how many pupils have visited an employer. Do they just comment on the quantitative and not the qualitative?
Hannah Sheehan: I think they would take the same approach they take to inspections more broadly, so trying to triangulate information wherever possible. You would expect them to talk to pupils about what they think they are getting, the careers leader about what they think they are providing, and the senior leadership of the school about the overall careers approach. They would look at the teaching of English in the same way; they would observe, look at books and talk to pupils. You would expect them to do that on careers as well.
Lord Porter of Spalding: With all the other subjects, there is a benchmark because there is an exam or something where people can say, ‘This school is performing well. Look, all the results are going up’, or ‘This school is performing badly’. All this relies on is somebody being honest with their own opinion of their own performance. It is very difficult to be objective when you are evaluating your own performance. I am brilliant at everything, but I have a sneaky feeling that there are a lot of people out there who think that I am probably not.
Hannah Sheehan: I am chair of governors of a primary school. We had an Ofsted inspection recently where they looked not just at key stage 2 data but at how we said the pupils were doing in every year group. They were looking at our data and triangulating it with the other things they could see. I think that is the same for careers.
I take the point, though, about the downsides of self-assessment. I do not think there is a perfect model or perfect way of doing it. It is also worth saying that Ofsted has done a thematic review of careers, so it has looked in more detail about what is going on across the sector as a whole, so we can write to you with more details about what that included.
The Chair: That would be really good to look at that. Is that quite recent?
Hannah Sheehan: It was last year, 2023.
Q76 Lord Prentis of Leeds: We have been talking about the Careers & Enterprise Company, and you have talked about all the different aspects—career hubs, career leaders, the Gatsby benchmarks. Our investigation is into the support for young disabled people. What does the Careers & Enterprise Company do that is tailored for young disabled people who may need help? How much is that part of its work, or does it not really have expertise in that?
Hannah Sheehan: It is very much part of its work. It is one of its top five priorities, and they are all passionate about it. In addition to the wider career support, it provides its specialist training on SEND for its hub leads and for the careers leaders in school. I have already touched on the community of improvement for inclusion, but that is where the hub leads come together across the country and share good practice. Speaking to a few of them last week, they were telling me good examples of what happens and how they share those with someone else, or how they might pick up what is happening in another region. The CEC is really keen on it.
There are loads of resources on the CEC’s website. It has a really good resource directory, I think it is called. The National Careers Service has dedicated pages on the support available for SEND young people and their families, to make it a bit easier for them to see what they are entitled to and what they can ask for.
Lord Prentis of Leeds: I am sure it will come out later in the questioning, but for most young people who may have special needs, young disabled people, there is no easy access to all the different things that are available. You are saying that it is on the website, it is done this way and it is done that way. Why is there not a smooth transition where young disabled people can see what they can access, the help that they can get and how that moves forward? It seems that different departments and local government are doing their own thing without the co-ordination that you would expect from something like the CEC or the other arms that have been set up to deal with it.
The Chair: This is a key area and a good bridge to the next area of questioning. Lord Laming, do you want to start on that, and then can we roll the questions into one discussion?
Q77 Lord Laming: Thank you, Chair. It is very good to have different departments and the three of you here. Thank you very much. One thing that interests the group, and Lord Prentis has touched on it already, is that each of these children will have their unique needs. Each of them will get to 18 and face the big change in their lives from education into adult services. We know, from evidence we have had, about the range of possibilities there is in the schools to support children with disabilities. We know that, in adulthood, there will be another range of services, such as DWP and employment services. I will not go through them all. Could you help us to understand the procedure for moving from the children’s services into the adult services so that there is a seamless change for each of these children?
Elizabeth Franey: Thank you. That is a really good question. There is a role here for schools and colleges, there is a role for local authorities, and there is certainly a role for DWP. Schools and colleges play a key role in making sure that young people understand, as they come to those key transitions, what is available and what support they can access. It is about holding the hand of the young person as they reach that transition point. We would expect schools and colleges, the SENCO and the careers team to hold the hand of the child at those transition points and to make clear what is available.
Local authorities also have a key role. They are required to publish what we call a local offer—everything, in one place, that is available in that locality for children and young people with SEND or disabilities. It is worth bearing in mind that our definition of SEND is from 0 to 25, so that local offer will include what is available after the age of 18. We would expect it to be comprehensive. The local offer can also talk about things that are not in that local authority but nearby. If the FE college or the specialist post-16 institution is outside, we would expect all of that to be available on that website. We think that parents and carers in particular, but also young people, use that local offer extensively.
We know that transitions are not good enough. In the SEND and AP improvement plan that we published in March last year, we have made a commitment to publish good practice guidance for transitions, thereby bringing all that information into one place. We want to look at all transitions that young people make between schools—say, primary school to secondary school—but we have made a very deliberate decision to start on that post‑16 and post-18 transition. When we were doing our Green Paper and consultation, young people told us that that was the most important point of transition, as you have said. We are working closely with DWP on that guidance now. We will also work with DHSC on it, because there may be a transition into adult social care. We think that will improve the awareness and availability of information for young people as they make that really important transition.
Q78 Lord Laming: That is terrific. Could you help us a bit further? I think we understand where the child goes into further education, because there is a continuation in the education commitment. Where the child is going into work, into employment, and not into education, seems a rather vague area to us, which may be our fault.
There is another thing that I would be grateful for your help with. We had evidence, which some of us found rather alarming, that, in local authorities, all the information that has been assembled over the years for a child with special needs was held in the education department but, at 18, was not transferred on to the adult services. The people who went into adult services had to start again as if they had just arrived on the scene, if I can put it in that way. Is somebody looking at how this transition can be a real transition and not something that parents and the child have to struggle for and try to struggle to understand?
Elizabeth Franey: Transfer of information is absolutely one of the things that we know can be improved upon. We know that, say, transferring from a secondary school to a college works well sometimes. In some cases it works brilliantly, and everything about the young person is transmitted in good time, and in other cases it does not. Our transitions guidance will talk about what good practice looks like in information terms as well. I want to reassure you that the information aspect is absolutely in our sights.
Jennifer Heigham: That is definitely a key area of focus. As Liz said, we are working closely together, and we have been working on that, and since we submitted the written evidence we have rolled out the adjustments planner for students. That is the university-to-work transition, and that is based on having tested that. We are now also testing a vocational programme passport or planner and looking at doing that early on. That is a way of capturing the information about what adjustments the child needs and taking that in. It can support discussion with the employer and with the JCP about what employment support the person needs. That is another area of picking up some of that information, moving it and helping with the transition from the education setting to the employment support or employment setting.
If someone moves from an education setting to work, obviously that is a good outcome. There are obviously legal obligations on employers to make adjustments. We also have the Access to Work programme—we can talk more about that, if that would be of interest—for adjustments that go beyond what might be reasonable to ask of an employer, so where a young person has more complex needs. That is where those planners come in, but you do not have to be in receipt of Access to Work to use those. Those are tools that are available and publicised on GOV.UK and through other routes. That is a mechanism for helping with that transition.
If someone is moving out of education but not into work—so inactive, out of work, unemployed—they would mostly be in touch with the jobcentre, at which point we have the mainstream provision, we have our youth offer and our disability specialist offer available to them. They would be helped by a work coach to navigate through that. As I said, I am part of a joint directorate, so we also have settings in health to reach some of the people who might not be in the jobcentre or it might be a more trusted setting. That also allows them to integrate with healthcare support.
As you said, there is also a lot of local authority and third sector provision, so it is complex. That is something we wrestle with. There is that balance between needing to have the right personalised provision and lots of different programmes, because there are different needs, and needing not to overwhelm and confuse. Most people will not be faced with the choice of all of those, because some will be suitable for some and some will be suitable for others. As far as possible, we try to support them to navigate. The work coach in the jobcentre will be able to point people towards the right support and are not just left alone. But we wrestle with that balance between making sure that it is clear and helping to make sure that everything joins up and makes sense.
Q79 Lord Prentis of Leeds: We have talked about the CEC and all the different aspects, and you have explained quite a lot to us this afternoon. There is not just the CEC involved in this. Quite a number of arms of government are involved. Time and time again, we have been told that people are not co-ordinating. It is not just one or two. There is a general feeling that comes through the evidence, whether from charities, the local authorities or other arms of government, that young disabled people find it very difficult to access the information, because it is not all together and easily readable and in a form where they can move forward based on the information they are given. Even if they get jobs, it is still very difficult for them to understand what their rights are.
Elizabeth Franey: I should have said earlier when I was talking about the transitions good practice guidance that we will produce an easy-read version of that. We recognise the problem you are describing. As I said, that guidance is aimed at precisely the problem you are describing of lots of different agencies and government bodies or charities being involved. It is about bringing all that into one place. We will absolutely make sure that there is an easy-read version. I recognise that problem, absolutely.
The Chair: Just reassure us that the departments work together on that.
Elizabeth Franey: Yes, it will be a joint effort. We have a working group with post-16 providers who are helping us to make it real, if you will, telling us what they are seeing on the ground. We work with DWP and DHSC on that. We will also, of course, involve local authorities, because they have the key role in this that I described earlier.
Q80 Lord Shipley: Earlier, you said that things can be different across the country. You have also said that it is complex. We would accept both those statements, but my question relates to how you actually know, in Whitehall, in a country of 56 million people with a large number of schools and local authorities, what is going on. Where do you get your evidence from? How do you evaluate what is happening in a place, in a town or city, and what interventions do you lead to make sure that things improve if you are aware that, let us say, a local authority is behaving differently from a neighbouring local authority? Who is responsible for doing something about that?
Elizabeth Franey: Thanks for the question. It is an excellent one. There are existing statutory duties for local authorities, education providers and health commissioners. We hold people to account for those existing duties through Ofsted and CQC inspections. The department also provides support and interventions for local authorities where we think that is not happening. I can say a bit more about those in a minute.
It is worth noting that, in the SEND and AP improvement plan, we set out our intention to clarify the roles. It is a complex accountability picture, as you set out. We also set out a range of strengthened accountability measures, so I will just give you a few. There is a new inspection framework for the Ofsted CQC area inspections. Those are probably the ones you are referring to here. There is also a greater focus on SEND in the new Ofsted education inspection framework, so when it goes into schools and colleges.
We also set out some more accountability measures that I think will be helpful in this. We are working on what we are calling inclusion dashboards, where all the data related to how well served SEND young people are in a place will be publicly available. The inclusion partnerships in each area that we are setting up will be able to see a clear picture of how they are performing. There are other things too, but those are the key things to mention now.
When local authorities are failing and concerns are found by Ofsted and CQC in their area inspections, we work with those local authorities. We have a range of improvement programmes. We have SEND advisers who can go into that local authority to help them and advise them on their improvement journey. Of course, we do not know what is going on in every corner of the country, but we feel like we have a good handle on the picture in each local authority. The regions group is one of the big groups in the Department for Education, and that is its role. It is in each region working with schools and local authorities where there is the need for improvement. I can reassure you that it is a key focus for the department and something that Ministers are constantly pushing us on.
Q81 Lord Bach: I want to ask about Ministers. It is a factual question. You tell us that you work well together, which is great. How does the ministerial responsibility work out between the various departments, both the ones that are here and the ones that are not? Are there different Ministers in each department who have a responsibility? Very briefly—it is only a factual question—how do you work with Ministers across departments in this area?
Jennifer Heigham: As I said, I am part of a joint directorate and have Ministers in DWP and DHSC who we report to on health and work, which covers disability and employment. For adults, both departments are jointly accountable. The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work in DWP also has a role in convening Ministers across government. There is a ministerial disability champion in every department; I think you may have heard about those from the Disability Unit.
The Disability Unit supports the Minister on that function, but that convening function remains and that is quite an active group. Its next meeting is next week. That brings in a cross-government aspect on disability. Then we work jointly. For example, the adjustments planner for students that I mentioned earlier was jointly launched by Ministers in DWP and DfE last November. There is a lot of joint working.
Elizabeth Franey: It is worth adding that it is Minister Johnston who is responsible for that intervention in local areas that I just described. He is our ministerial disability champion, so he is very plugged in with his colleagues in DWP and across government. As I said, those area inspections are joint between Ofsted and CQC, so there is that health element in the mix too.
Q82 Lord Carter of Coles: Good afternoon. My question is about supporting disabled people to access, and probably more importantly stay in, work. I have a couple of questions and then I am sure others will join in. On the Back to Work Plan, how far is that focused on disabled people, as opposed to just getting everybody back into work?
Jennifer Heigham: The Back to Work Plan pulled together various strands of funding and new announcements that we obtained in the Autumn Statement last year. It had two strands. There was a big focus on health and disability and supporting disabled people to stay in work, get back to work, or start work for the first time. That was a very big chunk of it.
Separately, there was a chunk of work on supporting people who are long-term unemployed or inactive with some more extensive support, such as extending the Restart programme. So there were two big chunks, but there was definitely a very big focus on disability employment. That picked up on and built on the programme that we had before that and quite a large announcement in the Spring Budget last year too.
Lord Carter of Coles: How would we know, if we met again in a couple of years, that this was successful?
Jennifer Heigham: We evaluate every programme we roll out, so we are doing quite a lot. Two things were announced in the spring, and there were further announcements in the autumn. One was the universal support supported employment programme, which builds on a large‑scale randomised controlled trial called health-led trials, which tested the individual placement and support model in primary care. We published the evaluation of that online last year or the year before, and that is available. It was based on having measured that. We will continually measure the success of that programme.
Another was called WorkWell partnerships, which looked at integrating work and health support, especially for slightly less-intensive support and with a particular focus on people who are in work. That is a set of pilots and trailblazers that we will be evaluating. We are building that evaluation into the design of the rollout and the piloting.
Q83 Lord Carter of Coles: I am sure you are expecting a specific question on the stricter work conditionality regime. Do you think it will disadvantage disabled people? How are you going to protect that group?
Jennifer Heigham: We are not changing the conditionality, but there will be further expectation for people who are not engaging where they could. It is aimed at people who can work and are choosing not to, who have been given opportunities and are turning them down without good reason. It is about not meeting mandatory requirements that have been put on them in consultation with a work coach. Mandated requirements should be and are based on tailoring to the individual. If someone has barriers to employment or is struggling with work, they should not be being asked to do anything that is beyond them. They would not be sanctioned unless there is no good reason for not having met them.
Lord Carter of Coles: It is about adhering to something they have agreed to, in a sense.
Jennifer Heigham: Yes, exactly. It takes someone’s disability into account.
Q84 Lord Bach: Following up on what Lord Carter just asked, there are claimants who are disabled. Are there examples yet, or are there likely to be, of such people who will be affected adversely by the Back to Work Plan? Will there be people who, for example, will not be entitled to have legal aid or to health service, which are some of the things that were headlines, of course? We are concerned to see how that might slip into applying to some people we are considering who are disabled or have additional needs. Surely that is not what the Government intend by this policy. Could it happen accidentally?
Jennifer Heigham: The claim closure measure is the one you are referring to. It is for those on work-related benefits who do not re-engage for a continuous period of six months or more. That will not be applied where a customer is receiving a top-up for disability. It explicitly excludes those who are in that group. There are also quite a lot of checks. We are very aware of the risk as a department, so there are lots of checks and balances on making sure that we are doing everything we can to engage with somebody before any decisions are made. It is for those who have exhausted all of that. As I say, those who are receiving a disability top-up are explicitly excluded.
Q85 The Chair: I want to say a bit more about universal support here, because that is the other side of that coin. You have targets on this, and the level of financial support is higher than it is elsewhere. Could you bring us up to date with the progress the department is making in the universal support scheme? Will it reach its targets? How is it going?
Jennifer Heigham: We are in development phase of universal support at the moment, so we are planning to go live with the programme in autumn 2024.
The Chair: Does that mean that you are running pilots, or are you still working it out in theory?
Jennifer Heigham: We have two precursor programmes. It is slightly complicated. I mentioned the health-led trials of IPS in primary care. We have rolled that out now in 42 local authority areas in England, and we will also roll it out in two areas in Wales. That will reach up to 25,000 people. They have been live since the first tranche went live in spring and the second tranche went live in autumn last year, so they are up and running and we are reaching expected levels on those, broadly.
We have a programme called the Work and Health Programme, which is a contracted employment programme. That is more of a traditional, ‘Help somebody to be work ready and then help them to apply’. We have introduced into that an additional element called Work and Health Programme pioneers, which, again, is the supported employment element. That is across England and Wales and another 25,000 places, again in the same time period. We have those two precursor programmes running partly to reach people quickly so that we had as much support as we could up and running as quickly as possible within existing contracts or existing grants so that we could get out the door a bit more quickly, and start building the capacity in the market, so that when we roll out universal support later this year, we will be able to hit the ground running, building on those two precursor programmes.
The Chair: Will anything go as a result of universal support being rolled out? We are looking at the Access to Work funding, which is an existing scheme, and yet an element of the universal support will be the £4,000 pot of money for support. Will they run alongside each other?
Jennifer Heigham: Yes. Some people who participate in universal support will need to apply for Access to Work for the adjustments that they need for working, and that will be ongoing. Yes, universal support and Access to Work will run alongside one another alongside various other less intensive interventions as well, such as the WorkWell programme I mentioned. It will replace the Work and Health Programme. The Work and Health Programme has been an ongoing and fairly long-term contracted employment provision that we have been running. That will end in September 2024 when the contracts come to an end, and it will be replaced by universal support.
Q86 Lord Shipley: I have asked in previous sessions about employers and how employers’ organisations might be encouraged to do more to spread good practice among other employers. If you have any examples of where there is good practice by employers organisations anywhere in the country, I would be keen to hear that.
I am keen to ask you about the Disability Confident scheme, however, because we have had some criticism of that. I understand that you may be thinking about ways in which it could be improved or reviewed, and whether in fact you think it delivers value for money. In other words, do you think it is working? What more can we do to help employers? Many of the difficulties that we talk about could be addressed if far more was done at a local level by the organisations that are based there. The question is how we can help employers more.
Jennifer Heigham: To take the question on Disability Confident, yes, we think it is important that there is a scheme for employers to sign up to that is nationally recognised. We think it is a very important signalling mechanism. It is also a way of spreading good practice. As you know, it is a laddered scheme, so people start at level 1 and work towards Disability Confident leader. We are also very aware that many organisations stop at level 1, and we would like to see more progressing through.
We launched a review of the scheme in 2021. As you will be aware, it was part of the national disability strategy. Unfortunately, with the court judgment, work on the review was paused in January 2022 and only un-paused in July last year. We have picked up the review again since then. We have discussed it with stakeholders, and we have a group advising us on it. We are focusing on two recommendations: strengthening the scheme, and tailoring the scheme for small and medium-sized enterprises. We have a programme of work that we will be rolling out this year to implement the recommendations to strengthen the Disability Confident scheme. We think there is a lot in it and definitely agree that there is scope for some improvement. That is our focus with that scheme.
Through that, we collect good practice from employers. We see a lot of very good practice from employers. We have the business leaders group as part of Disability Confident. That is an area where we get a lot of good examples. I am sure we could share some more specific examples with you if that would be helpful.
Lord Shipley: Yes, it would.
Hannah Sheehan: We have good examples that we can share with you outside this as well. In Lancashire, for example, they bring employers together with young people and help to broker employment opportunities with McDonald’s, Booths supermarket and Asda. The way the careers hubs are set up, they tend to bring in employers that are critical to that local area and to the sectors that operate in that area. Also, we do a lot of work through our apprenticeships programme, so we have a network of apprenticeship disability champions. They are employers that come together because they are passionate about disability and sharing good practice. There are examples that we can share from both of those.
Q87 The Chair: It is worth saying something about apprenticeships, because we have not covered that. I know that, as part of the SEND Green Paper, there was some work on English and maths assessment for entry to apprenticeships. Where does this area sit in the apprenticeship? Are employers recruiting young people with disabilities into apprenticeships? Are you happy that there are good-quality opportunities there for them?
Hannah Sheehan: Yes, and this is something that our Minister, Minister Halfon, is passionate about. We are really pleased that starts for apprentices declaring a learning difficulty or disability have gone up. It was 15.3% of starts in 2022-23, up from 10.1% in 2015-16.
The Chair: Is that statemented people or people who schools had on their special needs register?
Hannah Sheehan: That is an apprentice who declares themselves to be disabled, so it is slightly different. That is not as high as we would like, but we are pleased that that is going in the right direction. There is a small achievement gap, which we are focusing on: how to make sure that people with a disability do as well as their peers.
You touched on some of the pilots that we are running on English and maths. We are looking at what flexibility we can offer if a person applying for an apprenticeship cannot meet the English and maths standard, because we want to make sure that they are supported to still have that opportunity. The Minister is keen on mentoring support for disabled apprentices, so that is something we are exploring at the moment. There is a huge amount going on with apprenticeships, and we are really proud of all of it.
Q88 Lord Carter of Coles: You mentioned the successful hub in Lancashire and the example of Booths, et cetera. Presumably you could also point us—not specifically—to those that are not working. What are the common characteristics of the ones that work well, and the ones that are struggling? Do you have any sense of that?
Hannah Sheehan: The ones that are doing it well have more understanding of the actual needs of the young people. They have been out and seen them in schools. There was a lovely example in Lancashire where they brought employers in to where some students with disabilities were making pizza. The employers went round and talked to them and left with a real sense of their needs. When the employer can see the strengths of those young people and the support—quite often, the support is not what they would think it might be—that really helps. Where it does not work is where an employer is almost nervous and just thinks, ‘This will be really difficult. I’m not interested’. How do you help them to see what is really needed? As Jennifer has explained, there is loads of support out there for employers. How do we, as well as the DWP, raise that awareness?
Lord Carter of Coles: How do you do it?
Hannah Sheehan: Through hubs. I know I have spoken about the hubs a lot, but hubs are where we are bringing the schools and the employers together. We are sharing with the employers. We are inviting them along to conferences. There was a big inclusion conference last year in Lancashire where they brought together loads of different employers. They had young people speak. They had somebody who had just got a job at McDonald’s, which he had got on the back of a supported internship. He spoke and McDonald’s spoke. They shared with everybody in the room what support had been in place and all the positive changes he had brought to the organisation.
It is about doing more of that and sharing what works well. As you are picking up, it is also about the practical examples and the nice stories of individuals.
Q89 Lord Laming: It is very encouraging that there is such good work going on around the country. That is terrific. Great credit should go to everybody who is achieving that. There will be parts of the country that are a desert, if I can put it that way, when it comes to this kind of initiative.
There is something that I am not clear on. If the Minister or Ministers get a report that indicates that in authority X there is no motivation or willingness to take seriously issues that are of immense importance, what happens? Are you dependent on the good will of others, or are there levers that we do not know about that you can share with us?
Jennifer Heigham: There is a slightly different angle on it, but levelling up is all about looking at the performance of local areas and where they are lagging, where they have greater barriers and where they have greater needs. Twenty levelling-up partnership areas have been selected so far. We have been quite involved in those, because something that has been picked up in a lot of those areas, probably not surprisingly, is inactivity due to long-term sickness or disability. That has been quite a big focus of the DLUHC team. We have worked across government to bring together groups of people to look at those specific areas and work with the local areas. It is driven by the local area, but it is supported by central government. We are looking at how we can improve and support. That is one of the aspects that does help with that.
Hannah Sheehan: Another is the local skills improvement plans. Those are employer-led, and the careers hubs and careers infrastructure feed into those. That is a lever that the Government have. We should also not underestimate the power of the Minister picking up the phone and talking to someone. It can be extremely effective. Minister Halfon would not hesitate if he heard that something was going on that he was not so happy about.
Lord Laming: That in itself is immensely reassuring.
Q90 Lord Shipley: I want to ask about the detail of Disability Confident, just to be clear. I welcome the changes that are being talked about, but an issue has been raised with us and I would like to ask you whether it is being addressed. The scheme has been criticised for being focused on employer commitments and internal processes and practices, rather than outcomes for disabled people, and for not making it clear how employers become disability confident in action. It is also suggested that organisations can remain at Disability Confident levels 1 and 2 indefinitely without employing any disabled people. Is that true? Is that going to change, if it is?
Jennifer Heigham: On the first aspect, yes. The strengthening of the scheme is very much about looking at how we can make sure that it is succeeding and asking more of employers. There have been calls for us to look at this. Yes, you do not have to progress; you can stay at Disability Confident level 1. That is something we could look at more.
Our view has been that it is better to enable firms to access the tools and information and indicate their level of disability confidence, which can be more attractive—some disabled people look for that badge—rather than make it too rigorous and ask a lot, especially of SMEs. Another part of the work that we are doing this year is to look at what we ask of SMEs.
Asking so much and kicking people out of the scheme because they are not progressing feels like it could be counterproductive. That is where we have landed so far, but we are definitely looking at that as a live issue.
The Chair: You have to do something. Otherwise, you just stay as you are.
Q91 Lord Prentis of Leeds: I want to ask about the importance of the careers service. To me, it is of paramount importance that young disabled people get the best advice that they can get as they look for work, because they have a real difficulty with finding work. We all know the figures about young disabled people who do not go into work after leaving school.
The careers service has changed out of all recognition. It is now a lot more web based. It is based a lot more on remote interviews rather than face-to-face discussions. There is perhaps less contact with employers than in the past. From the earlier question, we know that it is provided a lot more cheaply than maybe ten years ago. How could the careers service be improved to provide better service to young disabled people and to get more of them into work?
Hannah Sheehan: I was struck by your point earlier about accessibility online and how difficult that can be for disabled young people. Although we have made sure that it is accessible and we have checked it with SEND young people, that point is right. This is about how we provide a single source of advice, one place you can go, that is accessible. That is what I would like to take away. We have talked through all the infrastructure that is there and the support you get through schools, but we need the equivalent of googling it and finding that one thing you can trust. Making that truly accessible is what I would like to have a look at.
Q92 Lord Willis of Knaresborough: My first question today was about school career leaders. I have really enjoyed your appearance today. All of you have been excellent in giving us very direct answers to the questions. There is one that is still at the back of my mind. If you have good school career leaders who are on top of their game, who are experienced and who see that as their own career, you are likely to get a better output in each school. Is there any chance at all of developing special qualifications for school leaders, which might not necessarily be for schoolteachers but people who will come into schools and do that work as part of a special careers education job?
Hannah Sheehan: Thank you for what you said at the beginning. That was very kind of you. In our statutory guidance, we recommend that schools bring in level 6 qualified careers advisers. That is what you are getting at.
The Chair: That is a careers adviser.
Hannah Sheehan: It is. Do you mean making sure that the people in the more leadership positions of the school are qualified?
Lord Willis of Knaresborough: Yes, I mean in the school.
Hannah Sheehan: That is one that we can take away and think about, because it is a good point. How do you make sure that they have the real in-depth knowledge that means that they are leading and guiding the school in that way? We can certainly take that away and have a look.
Q93 The Chair: There is no qualification, is there, for schoolteachers who wish to train in this? I know it is not in ITT, but if they are really keen to make a good job of this, is there a recognised qualification that you would advise them to get?
Hannah Sheehan: At the moment, there is a CEC module for schoolteachers and leaders, but you are suggesting that we go further.
The Chair: Which qualification is that a part of?
Hannah Sheehan: You are asking us to look at how we can go further and make it something that is recognised as a proper qualification. We can certainly take that away.
The Chair: Does your answer to that question mean that there is potentially no careers leader in any school who has any careers education qualification?
Hannah Sheehan: They could have. They could be qualified as a careers adviser.
The Chair: That is very unlikely.
Hannah Sheehan: If they are not, there is no leadership careers qualification. That is what you are identifying as a gap.
The Chair: That is the gap. Equally, on a positive note, you cannot be a careers guidance officer without a degree in careers guidance.
Lord Willis of Knaresborough: Yes, absolutely.
Hannah Sheehan: Yes, that is right. It is that more senior layer.
The Chair: Am I right in thinking that every school is now a member of a careers hub? No one is left out of that structure.
Hannah Sheehan: Not every school in every area. It is about 92% of schools and colleges.
The Chair: Is it optional?
Hannah Sheehan: Yes, but almost all do it. We are trying to close that gap and get it from 92% to 100%.
The Chair: That is your main delivery arm.
Hannah Sheehan: Yes.
The Chair: If they are not in that, they are not getting anything.
Lord Carter of Coles: Who runs a hub? What is the management structure of a hub?
Hannah Sheehan: It is different in different areas, because different people contribute. If there is a mayor, for example, the structure will be different compared to if there is not. It tends to be a partnership of LEPs, as used to be, or local authorities or an independent provider that it has been subcontracted to. They will bring all the different parties together, but there is no one size fits all.
The Chair: They are not rushing to take it on either, in my experience.
Lord Carter of Coles: I just wondered about pay. Who gets paid to do what? Can you be the chief executive of a hub? What amount of money do you get paid for it? Does that influence performance?
Hannah Sheehan: I do not know the answer to that.
Lord Carter of Coles: Could you let us know? Could we have a little organisation chart showing what they are paid and what the resources are?
Hannah Sheehan: Yes.
Q94 The Chair: That was very helpful. I have one last round-up question. It is probably more for the Ministers, but, in terms of your advice to Ministers, you can see there are a lot of good initiatives going on. The myriad names are very difficult to work out and remember. When you have another idea, you put a plus on the end of the original title, and it becomes even more difficult to work it out.
The problem is that there is no one scheme that has universal coverage. Is the department’s long-term aim to rationalise it all? When you think about where we will be in three, four, five years’ time, will we have even more programmes with more initials and plus-pluses, or will it have narrowed? Will it be evidence-based, comprehensive and running throughout the country? I have given you a hint as to what I think would be best, but there is an argument that says, ‘No, we’ll keep innovating. We’ll push out the different programmes. It’ll all be individually led and tailored to meet the needs of everyone’. What is the vision for this area of policy?
Jennifer Heigham: You are right. There is exactly that tension. We do not want to stop innovating and improving. There will be new ideas and we will want to bring in those new things, but we are trying to rationalise a bit. Universal support will replace several different things and become the one single intensive support programme that we are running for disabled people on employment.
We are doing a bit more in broadening out the number of less intensive programmes at the moment, but the aspiration is that we bring these systems together. One of the other announcements in the Autumn Statement was about fit note reform. That is about exactly that: trying to help people through that journey and to get quick access to the right support in a seamless way. That is the aspiration. Naming things is a different matter. It is a nightmare.
Elizabeth Franey: I would say a couple of things. The SEND and AP improvement plan was very much about consistency across the country. It is not exactly what you are asking for, but it is an important point in the same vein. What a disabled young person would get in one place should be equivalent across the country. We know that is not the case. That is very much front and centre of what we want to do.
We spend a lot of time co-producing what we do with children and young people. We make sure that we hear from them and that they shape our policy. That is really important. We get called to account by them frequently on complexity, easy-read versions and jargon. They are our hardest taskmasters, more so than Ministers.
We are under a lot of pressure to make sure what we are doing is evidence-based. There are some programmes where we are trying to build the evidence base. We know, for example, that supported internships can work effectively. We are building an evidence base of what makes it effective and how we can roll that out more successfully across the whole country. I have sort of dodged your question, but I hope it is in the right vein.
The Chair: That will do fine.
Hannah Sheehan: We have three priorities for our work on careers. The first is exactly about this: how do we streamline the offer? How do we make it make more sense? How do we make it easier to navigate? That is not just the DfE offer; that is working with DWP on how you present a single offer to an individual rather than all the various different programmes.
The Chair: We have loads of things on our list that we have still not asked you, I am afraid. If it is all right with you, we might come back to you for written responses so that we have those as evidence for our report. We are very grateful for your time and expertise today and for the way you have answered the questions. Thank you very much indeed.
