Written evidence from Name Withheld (DEG0037)

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 in 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 in work? Or what would you change about existing support on offer?

The process of getting reasonable adjustments approved took months and I had no idea what would happen if they were rejected. The process seemed set up to be unnecessarily adversarial and I felt at points as though I was being treated in the same way as if I had a performance issue.

Before I became disabled and needed accomodations I was due to have my pay reviewed to bring it in line with other similar positions. Since I've been receiving accommodations that has been ignored and even my Union rep seems to think I should just be grateful to keep my job at all.

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

The government should ensure that all employers have systems in place to handle accomodation requests AND that these systems are not part of a performance/dispute process but treated collaboratively and respectfully. I also think guidance on possible accomodations would be helpful as I think both employers and employees struggle to envision what accomodations might be appropriate or how they might be manageable.

The government should provide support for people with disabilities who believe they are being underpaid, have experienced discrimination or need help through the process of requesting accomodations. I had my Union rep but if I had not had access to them I would not have known where to get support.

There should be clearly signposted options for reporting discrimination. Last time I applied for a job I believe I was discriminated against, but have no idea what to do about it.

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