Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 11
11
Not Addressed
Discussing mental health, the Department did tell us about a number of initiatives arising from...
Conclusion
Discussing mental health, the Department did tell us about a number of initiatives arising from a joint Department for Work & Pensions and Department of Health & Social Care unit which looks to target some of the mental health challenges claimants face. The Department told us that it had “paid for employment advisers to be actually embedded” in the NHS mental health service for England which “frees up the therapist’s time to spend on mental health, and then the individual also gets the job help”.18 Additionally, the Department told us that an upcoming White Paper on health and work, due “early in 2023”, will discuss how it can “work more closely with” the NHS, the Department of Health & Social Care and employers to support people before they fall out of work, or to give “lower-level support” before people get into “a more acute situation further down the track”19
Government Response Summary
The government agrees that complex barriers prevent people from finding work and has set out a plan to improve support in the White Paper published on 15 March 2023, including extending the Employment Advisers in NHS Talking Therapies services, working with the Ministry of Justice, Department for Education, and Department for Levelling Up Housing and Communities.
Government Response
Not Addressed
HM Government
Not Addressed
6. PAC conclusion: Many claimants have complex barriers that prevent them from finding work, and some of these barriers may be better addressed through other means than an employment support scheme such as Restart. 6. PAC recommendation: The Department should set out, in its Treasury Minute response: • Its understanding of how complex barriers such as mental health problems and homelessness, which might not traditionally sit with the Department, impact on people’s ability to find work and the associated cost of this to society and the exchequer. • How it will develop and use its knowledge of claimants to help government as a whole to take a joined up and effective approach to overcoming the ‘complex barriers’ that prevent people from finding and maintaining employment 6.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Recommendation implemented 6.2 The government set out its plan to improve support to those with complex barriers relating to health and disability in the White Paper Transforming Support: The Health and Disability White Paper published on 15 March 2023 6.3 The White Paper recognizes the need to ensure join up across public services and with employers, to ensure that people receive the most appropriate support to release their potential. An example is the work through the Joint Work and Health Directorate, with Department for Health and Social Care, to extend the Employment Advisers in NHS Talking Therapies services to support more people with mental health issues (paragraph 65 of the White Paper). 6.4 The department also works across government to build support for claimants facing other complex needs, for example with: • Ministry of Justice, on their Prisons Strategy White Paper. This includes testing ways of starting Universal Credit claims and the claimant commitment in prison • Department for Education to support care leavers as they move out of the care system • Department for Levelling Up Housing and Communities on their rough sleeping strategy, to introduce homelessness leads in every jobcentre.