Disability Wales events: Discussing the DWP Green Paper

How does the Government treat disabled people on ESA? How do employers treat disabled people in work or looking for work?  Tell Disability Wales!

Have you been on Employment Support Allowance?

• Did it support you?
• How do work capability assessments need to change?

Disabled and applying for jobs?

• Job centres, work coaches, and work programmes – do they work for disabled people?

Come to one of the events:

• 31st January 10am-1pm: The Orbit Centre, Merthyr
• 7th February 10am-1pm: Maesgwyn Hall, Wrexham.

Disability Wales will add your comments to their response to the UK Government consultation, deadline 17 February  2017 11:45pm  They also intend to seek your comments through an online survey.

This is one of the biggest opportunities in recent years for disabled people to influence how the UK Government supports disabled people to work. Disability Wales is running a series of events to get your experiences and views on what the UK Government needs to do to make life better for disabled people.

The UK Government has a published “Improving Lives: The Work, Health and Disability Green Paper” which looks at the barriers to gaining and retaining employment for disabled people and people with long term health conditions.

Improving Lives – the Work, Health and Disability Green Paper was recently published by the UK Government’s Department for Work and Pensions and Department of Health.  The Green Paper is available at http://www.gov.uk/workandhealth

A Government Green paper is a document that sets out policy ideas before taking further action such as producing more concrete White Papers outlining intended approaches and ultimately, legislation.

The Improving Lives green paper is an extremely important opportunity for disabled people to tell the UK Government about the issues we face with accessing employment, dealing with employer attitudes, managing health conditions and accessing suitable health care.

Crucially, we can tell the Government about our experiences of the welfare system, of how Employment Support Allowance, Job Centres, Work Capability Assessments and other schemes support or fail us.

Disability Wales would like to hear from people who have experienced the challenges of the current system such as being on benefits like ESA or going through work capability assessments. We would also like to hear the experiences people have had with employers and finding and staying in work.

We want to understand what works and what doesn’t so we can include this in our consultation response to the Green Paper. Make your views known!