Access to Work Collective
Campaigning to improve the Access to Work scheme for disabled people in the UK.
The Access to Work scheme helps disabled people and people with long-term health conditions start or stay in work. This funding removes barriers that might stop them from working, like sign language interpreters for BSL.
You won’t see it in the helplines, but the government is quietly making it harder to access the scheme. Years of underfunding and cuts have led to backlogs and delays - now this delay has become severe with 60,000+ still waiting to be assessed, all while existing awards are being reduced and removed.
In the UK, disabled people are twice as likely to be out of work as the general population. So these changes are only making it worse.
“67% of the disabled people her group spoke to said they wouldn’t be able to work without the scheme.”
— Shani Dhanda, co-founder of Access of Work Collective
The government say disabled people who want to go into work should be supported to do so by them, but their own actions and inactions are preventing that. That’s why the Access to Work Collective, is trying to tackle these issues.
The collective is calling for this Government to make meaningful changes to the scheme now, clear the backlog and make sure disabled people can access the help they need. They recently delivered an open letter to the Prime Minister, backed by 17k people.