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Disability and Employment in Scotland: A Review of the Evidence Base
CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION
INTRODUCTION
7.1 This concluding chapter begins by reviewing key findings from earlier chapters, identifying over-arching themes and considering their implications for the current state of knowledge in relation to disability and employment in Scotland. It then outlines areas where future research is needed and concludes by considering what the implications of this review are for some of the key stakeholders - the Scottish Executive and its agencies, the UK government and its agencies, disabled people and employers.
Summary of findings
Disability and employment: the UK context
There is major concern about the growing number of people claiming incapacity benefits and the fact that the employment rate of disabled people has not greatly increased in a period of economic growth and stability and improved general health of the population: in GB, the employment rate of disabled people stands at about 50%, much lower than the employment rate of non-disabled people (80%); in Scotland, the employment rate of disabled people is only 39%.
Disability appears to be a major factor determining the distribution of income and wealth: in GB, 28% of the bottom quintile of households include one or more disabled persons, compared with 15% of households with no disabled adults; for the top quintile of households, the proportions are reversed.
Programmes to improve the employment rates of incapacity benefit claimants, particularly the New Deal for Disabled People, have had only a modest impact on reducing rates of economic inactivity.
Positive measures to boost the civil rights of disabled people through the DDA have also had modest, rather than spectacular, success.
Disability and employment in Scotland: a review of the data
The LFS data suggest that 20% of Scottish people aged 16 to retirement age are disabled, compared with a figure of approximately 15% derived from the Census.
Glasgow City has the highest proportion of people of working age with LLTI, closely followed by North Lanarkshire, and West Dunbartonshire.
The employment rate of people with limiting long-term illness is highest in the 16-35 age group in contrast to people without limiting long term illness where the employment rate is highest in the 35-49 age group.
People with limiting long-term illness tend to be employed in lower level occupations: a higher proportion are in semi-skilled and unskilled manual occupations and a lower proportion are middle managers.
Two thirds of people with limiting long term-illness living with dependent children are not in employment.
More than half of all people with limiting long-term illness have no qualifications and the proportion of people with limiting long-term illness achieving a higher education qualification is only half that of non-disabled people (in interpreting this discrepancy, it is, however, important to bear in mind that some people with limiting long-term illness will have learning disabilities).
11% of the Scottish population are in receipt of state benefit due to illness or disability, with much higher claimant rates in some areas in the west. People with mental health problems account for almost a quarter of all Disability Living Allowance awards.
A lower proportion of people with limiting long-term illness are homeowners and a higher proportion live in social rented accommodation.
Disability and employment: the Scottish context
Since the majority of people who are economically inactive in Scotland have a limiting long-term illness, one might have expected social justice and economic development policies to focus on this group, with a particular emphasis on people with mental health problems. However, at least until recently, this has not been the case.
Social justice indicators have tended to draw attention to the declining rate of unemployment as a measure of success. Claims have been made that there are overall reductions in the proportion of multiply disadvantaged people who are economically inactive. Whilst this claim is true for some claimant groups, for example, lone parents, it is not the case for incapacity benefit claimants, a much larger group.
UK and Scottish programmes and initiatives
The field of employment development in Scotland has become quite crowded, leading to duplication of effort.
There have been disjunctions between the employment policies of Jobcentre Plus and the Scottish Executive. Jobcentre Plus has until recently focused its employment programmes for disabled people (e.g. Job Broker schemes, Work Preparation) on those closest to the labour market and Access to Work is not available to people who are undertaking voluntary work. Supported employment is not funded by JCP, and attracts funds from a range of agencies including social work, health and the European Social Fund. By way of contrast, recent pilot projects funded by Scottish Enterprise through the New Futures Fund have been targeted at people with multiple disadvantages who are at a distance from the labour market, including disabled people who are incapacity benefit claimants.
Debates continue about which groups of disabled people should be targeted by employment programmes, and how outcomes should be measured. In particular, there is uncertainty about what should be classified as a successful outcome, and whether this should be restricted to open employment. It has been argued that supported employment, voluntary work or deciding not to work at all might be deemed as positive results. Programmes aimed at disabled people rarely succeed in placing more than 20% of participants in work although this might be seen as a good success rate bearing in mind the range of barriers disabled people encounter. Where considerable emphasis is placed on employment outcomes, this inevitably leads to 'cherry picking' and the distortion of outcome figures.
Experiences of specific groups: Impairment-specific versus mainstream provision
Despite the growing emphasis on the need to ensure that disabled people are able to access mainstream services, policies continue to be developed with a particular impairment group in mind. Such impairment-specific provision raises a number of issues and dilemmas. The disability movement has emphasised that disabled people should be seen collectively as a group subject to particular forms of discrimination and economic oppression. Developing policy in relation to a range of impairment groups may therefore undermine the political development of the disability movement, since the claims of one group for priority action may be pitted against another, assumptions may be made about the homogeneity of people within groups and some people may have no lobby group to speak for them.
Despite the proliferation of pilot projects and programmes, there are a number of social justice concerns in relation to access by disabled people. There are no entitlements to employment services or any right of appeal if denied access. Limited budgets lead to rationing of services. Access to Work, for example, is very highly regarded by employers and users, but it is rationed by its budget and therefore not widely publicised. Access to mainstream programmes may be restricted and there is no firm evidence on the extent to which disabled people are able to access other New Deal programmes. Finally, performance targets and funding regimes lead to unequal access, disadvantaging people less ready to take up paid work.
Future research priorities
7.2 There are a number of areas where future research on employment and disability in Scotland would be useful, including:
Research which draws on UK and international data on 'what works' in the field of training and employment for disabled people would be useful.
More research is needed to identify 'what works' in the field of vocational rehabilitation.
There is a need for more research on the impact of key differences in disabled people's experiences of employment and employment services in relation to nature of impairment, age, gender, race, social class and locality.
More research on the employment experiences of disabled parents would be useful.
The voices of disabled people have often been lacking from the research accounts which are available and more research is needed which focuses on their perspective, particularly in relation to research which focuses on policy evaluation.
More research is needed which focuses on employers' perspectives.
More research needs to be carried out to explore the large gap in qualifications between people with and without disabilities, to establish whether this can be explained by numbers of people with learning disabilities who may have difficulty obtaining qualifications or whether this is due to discrimination in the education system. Further research on disabled children's experiences of school, the destinations of disabled school leavers and disabled young people's experiences of further and higher education would be useful.
In addition to researching experiences of disappointment and failure, it is important to investigate disabled people's success in the education system and the labour market. Disabled graduates offer an opportunity to investigate the experiences of those who have achieved positive outcomes in the education system. Longitudinal work would be very useful in tracking the career development of this group over time. Research with disabled people who have remained in employment for sustained periods of time may help identify good practice in terms of how employers can both recruit disabled people and successfully keep them in employment.
There continues to be uncertainty as to whether programmes should be targeted at those closest to or furthest from the labour market and there are different views on how outcomes should be measured. Research is needed which explores programme outcomes for different groups, and which investigates the impact of using certain measures of success in terms of incentivising particular types of activity.
Given the complex relationship between disability, limiting long-term illness and joblessness, it is vital that research is conducted which informs the development of future policies in this area, exploring the inter-relationship of multiple barriers to employment and informing future employment programmes.
There is clearly a spatial element to the incidence and prevalence of disability in Scotland as well as to levels of economic activity and receipt of incapacity benefits. Programmes like the Glasgow Challenge have begun to examine the underlying reasons for high levels of economic inactivity in the city but there is a need for more research on disability in Scotland which takes an area based approach and investigates the relationship between disability, employment and poverty.
Lastly the absence of income data in relation to disabled people in Scotland means that there is a lack of information about low incomes and poverty in households containing people with a disability. More research in this area would be useful.
Disaggregated data priorities
7.3 It would also be useful if disaggregated data was available so that the effect of programmes and legislative developments on people with disabilities in Scotland could be evaluated:
Given the fact that disabled people in Scotland are less likely to be economically active than the equivalent population in the rest of GB, it would be useful to consider the possibility of separate data for Scotland for JCP programme evaluations.
It would also be useful if separate data analyses could be conducted in relation to legislative developments such as the impact of the Disability Discrimination Act and the National Minimum Wage.
Implications of findings for different groups
The Scottish Executive and its agencies
Given the association between the buoyancy of the local economy, the number of people reporting an illness or disability and the employment rates of disabled people, there is a need for the Scottish Executive, in partnership with the UK Government, to continue with its efforts to revitalise areas of long-term industrial decline, in particular Glasgow and Dundee.
There is a need for key Scottish Executive departments (Scottish Executive Enterprise, Transport and Lifelong Learning Department, Scottish Executive Development Department, Scottish Executive Education Department) to collaborate much more closely with their UK counterparts to ensure that Scottish policies and initiatives articulate with those developed at UK level.
Within Scotland, there is a need for a better articulation of the social justice and equality agendas, recognising that the disadvantage experienced by disabled people is both economic and attitudinal in origin and that these are inter-connected.
Disability should feature more prominently in the social justice indicators, since the majority of those who are economically inactive are disabled.
Closer collaboration between health and employment services evident in the incapacity benefit pilots is to be welcomed and needs to be extended and developed in the light of the evaluation evidence.
Efforts to improve the health and safety environment of workplaces, particularly in SMEs, need to be supported and extended.
There is a need for on-going monitoring of the extent to which inequalities exist in access to employment and employment programmes among disabled people, e.g. people with mental health problems. In addition, the adequacy of support in the workplace and training programmes for particular groups, e.g. Deaf people, should be explored.
There is a need for all Scottish providers of education, training and employment to disabled people to publish outcome data in accessible format and to monitor outcomes over time.
The Scottish policy field is quite crowded, with many agencies providing training and employment services for disabled people. There is a need to ensure that the work of different agencies at local and national level articulates smoothly.
The UK Government and its agencies
In the light of evidence on the limited success of the New Deal for Disabled People, there is a need for a reappraisal of the extent to which current programmes are achieving their goals of removing the barriers to employment for disabled people, particularly those facing multiple barriers.
There is a need for a greater recognition of the inter-connectedness of social justice concerns, e.g. child poverty cannot be tackled without addressing the needs of disabled adults as parents and employees. UK policies need to be developed which recognise the links between adult and child poverty, poor housing, poor educational outcomes, economic inactivity and illness and disability.
Jobcentre Plus needs to continue and extend current debates about the merit of specialist or mainstream services. In addition, the ways in which programme outcomes should be measured, particularly the balance to be maintained between 'hard' and 'soft' outcome measures, requires ongoing discussion.
In the light of the proposed new Commission on Equality and Human Rights, there is a need to ensure that both disability and Scottish issues are adequately understood and addressed.
Disabled people
This report makes clear that there is a long way to go before disabled people achieve economic and social equality in Scotland and the UK. There is therefore a need for disabled people to continue to pressurise government at UK and Scottish levels for better access to education, training and employment and to ensure they are consulted on policy decisions and are directly involved in policy evaluations.
There is evidence that many workplaces do not provide healthy working environments for disabled and non-disabled employees. There is a need for all employees to be engaged in the promotion of health and safety in the workplace and to pressurise employers for change when this is needed.
Disabled people need information on the impact of policy developments such as the National Minimum Wage, the Disability Discrimination Act and the New Deal for Disabled People. Requests should be made for accessible information from relevant agencies to inform future campaigns.
Employers
Although representative organisations are routinely consulted about major policy developments, employers at local level have sometimes been left out of the loop in discussions on employment initiatives for disabled people. Given their centrality in the delivery of employment and training programmes, they should be much more closely involved in planning and monitoring.
Employers have major responsibility for the creation of healthy workplaces. There is a need for better understanding of the factors which contribute to healthy working environments, particularly those affecting employees' mental health.
Employers need to be better informed about the support requirements of disabled employees and those on work placements. Employment service providers should ensure that they liaise closely with employers offering work placements to ensure that appropriate support is in place.
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