Key points from Mental health and employment (DWP report 513)

As the summary on the DWP site isn't terribly helpful, we've extracted the key points for moving people into work from this report. The report itself covers the entire employment process, but did not cover Pathways to Work areas and thus has a limited amount to say about it.

The following points seemed the most interesting for welfare to work providers:

• Mental health-related IB claimants typically wanted to be in employment and understood the benefits that could derive from work
• Claimants generally moved into work once their condition improved. This means that they did not normally discuss mental health issues with interviewers
• Disability Employment Advisers were found to be very helpful, mainstream advisers less so
• Employers gave mixed responses about the usefulness of being told of interviewee's conditions, but in any case were not usually informed at the interview stage
• Mandatory interviews were not seen as terribly helpful - 'for many people who are out of work because of mental ill health, there is often a period of time when they are not ready mentally to enter into discussions about a return to work. Only when people feel ‘better’ do they make (often rapid) progress towards work.'
• The report was broadly supportive of the Pathways to Work regime (although without reviewing it in practice), but urged flexibility in applying mandatory interview conditions to customers with mental health problems

The full report is available here (pdf).