By Jack Welch
For the course of June, the four weeks play host to a number of weeks to champion an array of causes which often fall out of the spotlight or wider public attention. Whether that may be carers week or volunteers week, they will each mean something to the population who fall into those categories. On a personal level though, learning disability week provides a reminder of the scale of challenges which those with a lifelong condition have to overcome – employment perhaps being the most significant obstacle.
In the UK itself, there are an estimated 1.5 million who have a diagnosed condition. This can comprise of a series of known cases, including autism, Down’s Syndrome and Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, which occurs when alcohol is consumed during pregnancy. Understanding among employers is often patchy and according to a report published back in 2013 by a coalition of charities, 42% of disabled people are classed as NEET in comparison to 18% of their non-disabled counterparts. The number of qualifications gained by disabled individuals, which sadly seems unsurprising, are also markedly lower and where many are educated in mainstream schooling. Looking at this from a broader context, it is all the more serious due to the lack of political attention such issues have when compared to youth unemployment more broadly. According to the Equality Act itself, which succeeded the original Disability Discrimination Act, employers are expected to make ‘adjustments’ for those with known disabilities to enable them in work, education and beyond. However, full equal rights yet still some way off.
Beyond employment figures, concern lies in the present reforms of learning disability benefit, Disability Living Allowance (DLA), which since 2013 has gradually been replaced by the Personal Independence Payment (PIP). Any young person over 16 wishing to claim now has to make an application for PIP. Many stories have emerged of the ordeals which people go through in the new work capability assessments to determine if they are fit for work, with Atos, who were contracted to deliver the process, left under the strain of assessing those claimants. Unlike Jobseekers Allowance, disability benefit is to a degree not impacted by employment and not attached to the Universal Credit programme. With an approaching 80,000 on a backlog list waiting to hear the results if they are entitled to PIP, many are likely to be losing out in the face of part-time or low paid employment. For those fortunate enough to be employed, the figures remains substandard, as figures from the British Association for Supported Employment indicated 6.8% of those with known learning disabilities were in paid work. This is in contrast to Mencap statistics that 65% of people they surveyed said they felt able to work, but could not progress.
The new Conservative government itself aimed from its manifesto to ‘transform policy, practice and public attitudes so that hundreds of thousands more disabled people […] find employment.’ While this is a welcoming, if rather vague and yet unsubstantiated, pledge, it has not been helped by current Minister for Welfare Reform, Lord Freud, who said disabled people were worth as little as £2 an hour. He has since apologised for those remarks.
While many employers now have ‘Positive about disabled people’ status to their name, it should only be an aim that they further advertise openly for the talents which those with learning disabilities provide. Earlier this year, Microsoft recruited specifically for those on the autistic spectrum, knowing the strong capabilities they could bring to their workforce. Although this may appear as positive discrimination in some ways, employers must be far more enthusiastic if they are recruiting a young workforce regardless of their limitations.
