Toni Giugliano explains why the Access to Work system for disabled Scots is failing people with mental health problems

Access to Work is a UK Government welfare programme that offers practical assistance to disabled people, helping them to stay in employment. A mere 860 applicants were granted funding through the scheme over the past year in Scotland, yet 50% of disabled adults north of the border are out of work.

Scottish control over this support fund would allow us to learn from the mistakes of the status quo, redesign services differently and ensure that the needs of Scots with mental health problems are no longer sidelined but put front and centre.

Unfortunately the UK Government doesn’t see it this way.

As people with mental health problems know only too well, the welfare system can be amazingly and perversely complex

Toni Giugliano

Surely the benefits of secure employment for both economic security and peace of mind should be something that any government should support without hesitation or ambiguity?

A multitude of sources document the ways in which an array of cuts, invasive ESA (Employment Support Allowance) assessments – often conducted by assessors with a flawed understanding of mental health issues – benefit caps and restrictions on tax credits are steadily making the everyday lives of affected Scots more difficult.

The cuts of £30 a week to ESA for new claimants placed in the Work Related Activity Group (WRAG) announced in the budget last month only darken this picture further and show where the new government’s priorities lie.

Heart breaking testimonials on how these ideologically driven measures are affecting the lives of ordinary people have been set out by the Scottish Association for Mental Health (SAMH) in its report Fit for Purpose. OIt the ways in which mental health conditions are exacerbated by the worry, fear and uncertainty that have followed in the wake of welfare reform.

Recent research highlighted in a report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has shown that GPs are reporting increasing mental health issues among patients in very deprived areas in Scotland. With Institute for Fiscal Studies research showing that a growing proportion of disability benefit claimants are claiming on the basis of mental or behavioural health reasons – up to almost 50% in some age groups – and that by 2017 most benefit rates will be lower than in 2008, the outlook is increasingly grim.

It doesn’t need to be this way.

Key welfare programmes – like Work Choice, for instance – are in the course of being devolved to the Scottish Government, which will therefore have an opportunity to streamline them. As people with mental health problems know only too well, the welfare system can be amazingly and perversely complex. In untangling lines of responsibility and funding of Byzantine intricacy, Holyrood will have its work cut out when it assumes responsibility for the programme in 2017 – but the need is pressing, and addressing it could have a profound impact on the lives of tens of thousands across Scotland.

But more can be done. The politics around parts of the bill may be fraught, but it makes perfect sense for the UK Government to devolve Access to Work to Holyrood. If the exchequer wants fewer people on benefits and more in work, then investing in a programme that empowers people with disabilities and supports them to move into sustained, secure employment is surely the right – and economically rational – thing to do.

Everyone recognises the urgency of pushing up employment rates among the disabled with mental health issues – only 21% of whom are in work. And the demand for work is palpable: dozens of SAMH reports feature legions of mentally ill men and women crying out for the sense of agency and economic security that a full-time job can provide.

The aforementioned cuts to ESA, of course, only make achieving this more difficult. For a government that’s supposedly focused on getting people back to work above all else, a myopic obsession with saving money in the short term will only make it harder to get disabled people into the workforce in the long term.

Moreover, despite encouraging rhetoric, the government has done little meaningful to address the enduring stigma attached to the employment of those with mental health problems – a stigma that means that according to recent UK statistics only 30% of employers would employ someone with a mental health problem. In fact, the changes to ESA are stigmatising in suggesting that people who claim this benefit do so for financial reasons, rather than needing extra funding to pay for additional costs caused by their illness.

With the Scotland Bill grinding its way through the final stages of the Westminster sausage machine, by the end of the decade Holyrood will have powers over social policy and spending beyond anything in modern Scottish history. It is disappointing that Access to Work amendments have been excluded from report stage – but even if it won’t be devolved, the UK Government still has a duty to improve the fund, address the fact it is inaccessible and take steps to increase take up.

And looking beyond the Scotland Bill, third sector organisations are in a unique position to influence how welfare and employment packages are designed and administered in Scotland. We have the opportunity to lead the UK in creating a system where people with mental health problems are valued citizens and no longer treated as a burden on our society. If the prize is a fairer, more just Scotland, then that prize is worth fighting for.