People with mental health problems are at risk of being left behind in the Government's welfare reform process, Sainsbury Centre director of employment Dr Bob Grove warned today.
Responding to the Green Paper on Welfare Reform, No One Written Off, Bob Grove said: "The Government rightly wants to help the one million or more people on incapacity benefits with depression, anxiety and other mental health problems to get and keep jobs. Most of those people want to work and, with the right support and encouragement, they can.
"But ministers are at risk of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory if they do not invest sufficiently in proven approaches to supporting people with mental health problems into employment.
"International experience shows that paying private providers of employment support by results runs the risk that people who are hardest to place get discriminated against. The Government should take rigorous steps to ensure that providers do not 'cherry pick' those who are easiest to place in jobs.
"We know that the new system needs sufficient skilled staff to act as personal advisers to claimants. It is unclear where they will come from and what training they will get in working with people with mental health problems. The risk is that private providers will simply take staff from the public sector and that shortages of skilled workers will remain in the system as a whole.
"We need to develop the skills of both Jobcentre Plus and private sector staff to ensure they offer effective support. And we need to ensure small voluntary sector providers who have the skills to work with people with mental health problems are not held back by a system that pays by results.
"We welcome the plan to pilot Fit for Work services in GP surgeries and the doubling of the Access to Work budget. Less than 1% of the current Access to Work budget is spent on helping people with mental health problems to stay in work. This will need to increase considerably to make workplaces better for staff with mental health problems.
"People with mental health problems are the largest single group of incapacity benefits claimants. For many, the biggest barriers to work are the stigma of mental ill health and a system that saps people of their confidence in themselves. The Government needs to recognise that overcoming these will be a huge task. But without it we are at risk of missing an opportunity in a generation to increase the life chances of people with mental health problems across the UK."