Good quality, tailored support needed to help incapacity benefit claimants return to work
January 25, 2006 12:00 AM
Derby Liberal Democrat campaigner Cllr Lucy Care has welcomed the Government's commitment to reduce the number of people on incapacity benefit as new welfare reform proposals were announced yesterday.
She also revealed that in the Derby North and South constituencies there are:
- 9,800 people in receipt of incapacity benefit
- All but 14% have been claiming for at least 2 years
- 3800 of these claimants have mental or behavioural disorders, and account for 39% of all cases
- There has been an increase of 29% in the number of people with mental or behavioural disorders on Incapacity Benefit since Labour came to power
Cllr Care said: "Within a year of coming to power, Labour published a Welfare Reform Green Paper, talked about tackling the rising number of people on incapacity benefit and helping the million claimants who said they wanted to work.
"Eight years on we are in exactly the same position.
"Despite these eight years of failure, the Government are right to go back and look again at tackling a system which is a scandalous waste of human potential and which has condemned a million people who want to work to a lifetime on benefits.
"The strategy set out by the Government is welcome, but it will not be easy to deliver.
"The success of the strategy will be whether the nearly 10,000 incapacity benefit claimants in Derby North and South are given good quality support, individually tailored to meet their needs. In addition there must be sufficient safeguards to prevent vulnerable people from being penalised because the system is not sophisticated enough to deal with complex conditions.
"There must also be more support to help people retain their jobs when they become ill; more support for employers to take on disabled staff; greater use of voluntary sector expertise; and enough flexibility within the proposed new benefits to accommodate those with fluctuating conditions.
"Finally, the increasing incidence of mental health problems requires
special attention. The grim statistics show that if you are on the benefit for more than two years, you are more likely to die or retire than return to work. In Derby it seems that not only is there an increasing proportion with mental health problems on benefit but 71% of them have been on the benefit for over 2 years."
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