Access to Work: a new dawn?
Should we be worried that Access To Work (ATW) is about to change? Maybe even disappear?
Or had it already long passed its Best Before date?
While Labour ministers insist that, despite its dent on disability benefits, it is focused on helping disabled people find work or stay in it, there’s big concern that there will be a second wave of cutting costs after the changes to PIP, making it even harder for disabled workers.
What does that mean for neurodivergent individuals? And for their employers?
Well, in a way, things have been changing for some time. Neurodiversity practitioners have found it a big ask to sing the praises of ATW in the last couple of years as the lag between application and an assessment has grown longer and longer. To 20 weeks. Then 24. And now 40. It’s left people who need help overcoming barriers to work without support for lengthy periods of time.
And then, when they do get the ATW call, there’s stories of individuals being told that they don’t need support for challenges they’re facing as a result of their neurodivergence. Being told they don’t need or can’t have it support… when they’ve waited 40 weeks and been struggling all that time.
Overwhelmed by demand and therefore underfunded and understaffed, it is very likely that ATW’s Day of Reckoning is on the horizon. So what shall we do?
What’s the plan?
How’s about Plan A?
You could prepare your organisation on the basis of neurodiversity through:
- Weaving neuro-inclusion into budget and planning stages.
- Assuming difference and equip the workforce accordingly.
- Hanging it all on universal design; from structuring processes, environments and buildings, to staffing projects and approaches.
- Nurturing a neuro-inclusive culture, one where interventions for individuals are rendered pretty much obsolete because you’ve been upskilling managers and leaders with neuro-inclusive management practices. After all, it makes no sense to have 8 members of your department in neurodiversity coaching funded by ATW when your employees could have been trained to be neuro-affirmative coaching style colleagues and managers and lay down a bedrock of psychological safety.
- Training on what neuro-affirmative leadership is for a real Return on Investment. Through listening, people will feel more valued and engaged, leading to greater productivity and efficiency. Over 70% of adjustments are simple and cost-free. You just need to know how to have the neurodiversity conversations and what to do.
- Still unconvinced?… look to brand research. It shows that customers prefer socially inclusive companies, as do job seekers, particularly millennials who are believed to be ¾ of global workforce by now, in 2025. 64% of those surveyed want to work with employers with strong CSR (Cone communications Millennial Employee Engagement Study, 2016).
Doing good is good business (CIPD, 2018), didn’t you know?
Or… you could do Plan B, of course.
- Basically, sit and wait and hope for Access To Work not to be cut back but invested in and extended so it can meet burgeoning demand.
There’s no choice really, is there? We owe it to each other to honour diversity of humans. Otherwise, we’ll continue doing the same thing and get similar-ish outcomes.
Talk to Neurodiversity Specialists if you’d like some help in driving systemic change rather than sitting and waiting for that ATW train. It never had gravy, may well get cancelled, and no-one likes a replacement bus service, right?
