ATW0345 - Evidence on Employment support for disabled people: Access to Work

Letter from Julie Fernandez to Mr Mark Harper MP, Minister of State for Disabled People

Dear Mr Harper,

My name is Julie Fernandez and I am the actress and presenter in a wheelchair who played Brenda in the BBC comedy The Office. I am also a disability rights campaigner and have worked for over 20 years with governments and the business community to improve disability equality. Three years ago I opened a craft shop and training centre which is growing from strength to strength and now employs 11 people and I also make documentaries for BBC Radio 4 on subjects relating to disability. My husband and I are foster parents to teenagers for Peterborough C ity Council.

In July I was offered the opportunity along with my business partner to design craft kits for a UK based international company that sells to the craft industry. These kits will be sold through John Lewis, Hobbycraft and independent retailers in the UK. We will then look at Europe and further afield. The first kit is planned to go on the shelves in November of this year.

I have been lucky enough since 2001 to be able to get the benefit Access to Work which has helped me to stay in full time work by employing a full time support worker to aid me in doing all of the physical things I struggle to do as a wheelchair user who has Brittle Bone Disease. So far I have had approximately 70 operations and 100 fractures but have never let that stop me from working.

During the 20 years that I have worked and been a tax-paying UK citizen, I have not been a high earner and in fact over the past few years due to starting a new and thriving business, I have been running at a loss to enable my business to grow. I am lucky enough to have a husband who earns a good living and can support us both until my wages increase during this period.

I now find that this is a detriment as I have recently in early June had my three year assessment with Access to Work where I had to prove why I need between 45 to 60 hours a week to employ a support worker to help me do my jobs.

I am self-employed for my media and disability awareness career and PAYE for my business Bee C rafty Ltd. Due to my shop moving to larger premises on its second birthday, my business partner and I have taken a lesser wage to help to pay off the debt from the move and to pay for the increase in staf f needed to run the business. My self employed media career can have lean times and busier times, more recently it has been busier as I have been involved with national disability awareness campaigns for SCOPE on disability equality and with Radio 4 mak ing documentaries on disability-related subjects I find important, for which I have won awards. I have also gained a growing reputation as a craft specialist on live TV for C reate & C raft to name but a few.

Due to my earnings decrease over the past two years, my accounts have shown a loss. This means that Access to Work is telling me that I need to prove a better wage over the next three months otherwise they will remove support. They won' t consider the two professional activities working alongside each other; the increase over time with the growth of my business; the way that my media career involves a variation in revenue from one month to the next; that I am currently in a ' quiet' spell for my business.

On top of this I am being told that I should have informed Access to Work - when I started my craft business - about the changes to my working day and that I hadn't done this. This is in fact untrue: I communicated this on the telephone some years ago with a gentleman. Unfortunately I do not have a record of his name or the date. As I did not hear from Access to Work about this, I assumed that everything was in order. I didn't want to chase it as dealing with the DWP and the benefits system is a stressful, complicated and demoralising process and I was scared of having to go through the system once again and losing my job.

Getting through every day with the level of pain that I have, the lack of access to the built environment and the stress of running a small business is exhausting; this is made even worse by the fact that I now have to spend the next three months writing a diary and sending in my accounts to DWP who will then decide if they will carry on granting me Access to Work support. I have prided myself on always working since the day I left school: the only time I wish to give up work is when my disability affects me to such a degree that I cannot work any longer.

The government is trying to get disabled people into work and yet here I am working 6 days a week, paying tax, creating 1 1 jobs for other people, paying thousands of pounds in VAT - still I have to jump through hoops to prove why I should be allowed to work.

I appreciate that there are guidelines which DWP and Access to Work have to work by, but when it comes to disability, life is not as simple as ticking boxes. Due to the very nature of our disability, we have to think outside of the box and work around many things including the way that we are treated by the benefits system which should be there to support us not to make us feel under more pressure than we already do. In particular, having to deal .with a different person every time you make contact with AtW about your individual case and having to explain to them very personal details of the care that you need.

I am a strong-willed person and can't comprehend why DWP should make me feel so inadequate, incapable and has ignored everything that I have achieved. Imagine how difficult it must be for other disabled people - those who don' t have the confidence that I do to write this letter to you all, to fight the system and to bring it to the attention of those who can make a difference. So for their sake - and for my own - please do not ignore this letter. I would very much appreciate a meeting with you to discuss this further at your earliest convenience.