Written evidence from Name Withheld (DEG0032)

I am responding to your call for evidence through Scope, the disability equality charity. I want to share my experiences of the barriers I've faced getting into work and what can be improved to help disabled people in the future.

I've answered two questions below as part of your call for evidence.

What extra support would you benefit from to get into work?

An understanding that if someone has a back which goes into spasm and has told their coach they cant do lifting, bending and reaching that offering them a fulltime job to apply for as a shelf filler isnt really appropriate. And when they keep putting part time, temp, commission only or zero hour contracts when that person lives alone, that those jobs are not suitable. Then using cbt tactics of saying i was negative and they werent going to listen to me, but then telling me i wasn’t listening to them.

Then asking me if i wanted a job or not because i didnt want a job thats 7&1/2 hours a week as it would cost me more in bus fairs than it would earnings, was also one for 9 hours. The 12hr posts id break even but would not be better off in work and they also would leave me open to going onto UC when the temp contract is finnished. I have mental health issues and im scared of going on UC, im currently on esa support group. They also did a better in work calculation but this did not take in the cost of travel which for me would be £8.50 a day or £32+ a weeks so if i worked 16 hours id only be better off by £32 if i was on UC after the temp job finnished id lose my legacy benefit and be worse off by £57.00 a week and even further worse off waiting the five weeks + with no money would wipe out any gains i got in work. Im also finding it difficult to find a job suited to my back problem. A lot of the jobs need drivers and i dont drive. Being offerred precarious sales jobs.. Im rubbish at sales and i myself dont like being accosted in the street by sales people trying to sell stuff for commission only pay. I need something long term 16hours or more, where i can move around as sitting and standing too long also makes my back. bad. I havent worked for 14 years and cant remember exact dates of when i did work.

I was sacked from my second last job after punching my boss when i had been sexually groped in a toilet by a large male with paraphinosis. And my boss was trying to defend him

Looking to the future, what does the Government need to improve on to help disabled people get into, stay and progress in work?

Deal with bad employers who have rapid staff turn over because they treat their staff like robots. End zero hours contracts and jobs offering less than 12 hours work. End bogus self employment. End pyramid marketers offering remote work. Count busfairs in with better in work calculations. End the forcing of cbt and mindfullness patronising languages towards job seekers especially older workers who might be struggling with the tech aspects of worksearch. Encourage jobs coaches to find suitable work for people with hidden illness that wont cause the jobseekers problems. Offer a couple of weeks training with travel costs for jobseekers without it effecting legacy benefits. The trainor can then become a reference and the trainee will hopefully find a job that takes their dissabillity and age into consideration. Offer free courses where the trainee could gain qualifications for the job, ie councelling, mental health worker. Corvid has also disadvantaged jobsearchers who lack computer skills or have limited knowledge due to the social distancing in that they cant get close enough to show you how to upload download cvs from email and how to format memory sticks so you can put the cv there so you dont accidently bin the email and also how to do attatchments. So i can send my cv to employers and other jobsearch companies. And lastly when you send a survey to do it with suitable sised fonts so that those of us who wear specs can see their typing properly. Excuse my typos.

The disability employment gap has been stuck close to 30 percent for over a decade, and the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic has seen disabled people falling out of work faster than non-disabled people. 

Scope wants the Government to deliver on its pledge to tackle the disability employment gap. The Government must use the opportunity of the forthcoming National Strategy for Disabled People to set out plans to close the gap.

I hope that the evidence I have provided, alongside research from Scope will prove useful to the committee.

December 2020