Examination of Witnesses (Questions 118
- 139)
MONDAY 10 MAY 1999
MR RICHARD
WOOD AND
MR NEIL
BETTERIDGE
Chairman
118. Welcome to our second set of guests. Thank
you very much indeed for the evidence you have given us so far
and for coming to talk to us this afternoon. Perhaps I can begin
by asking you to give us each a brief introduction to the work
you do and your general views about this issue?
(Mr Wood) I am Richard Wood, I am the
chief executive of the British Council of Disabled People. We
are a member organisation and an umbrella for organisations which
are controlled by disabled people. It has to be written in their
constitutions that they are controlled by disabled people. Currently
we have 136 groups in England, Scotland and Wales. We regard ourselves
as a human rights organisation, we have been heavily involved
in a campaign for anti-discrimination legislation, and we work
on a whole range of human and civil rights issues both here and
in Europe.
(Mr Betteridge) I am Neil Betteridge, Head of Projects
and Campaigns at RADAR. RADAR, the Royal Association for Disability
and Rehabilitation, is similar to BCODP, an umbrella group. We
have around 500 member organisations, over half of which are controlled
by disabled people. Our main functions are information provision,
and we provide information on all matters relating to disability
except medical issues and we take about 23,000 calls a year on
that; we seek to represent our member organisations and campaign
on their behalf; and I, within the organisation, have overall
responsibility for all the social policy issues including employment
and social security.
119. Thank you very much. Can I ask you both
in general terms about the barriers to work for the people you
represent, and whether you think Work-focused Gateways is the
best approach to assist and help the people you represent?
(Mr Betteridge) In terms of where disabled
people can go, partly via the gateway, it is important to know
where we are coming from, where we are starting from, and it is
impossible therefore, without digressing wildly, to ignore the
historical factors both in terms of the individual background
of disabled people, what they have gone through in the way of
previous education and work prospects, but also the historical
reasons which shape the environment. When you combine issues like
the possibility the disabled person is a young person, if they
were disabled then they may have been excluded for at least part
of their education, if they were, shall we say, fortunate enough
to have been included within mainstream education as a disabled
child, they may well have encountered negative, perhaps oppressive,
attitudes from peers and/or teachers, may have found the built
environment very restricting, and it may well be that further
opportunities since then have been limited by reasons beyond their
own personal control, all in the context of potentially very limited
expectations. Those expectations cut both ways, employers and
potential employers may have quite low expectations of what disabled
people can achieve and that in itself has or can have a very corrosive
effect on what a disabled person themselves think they can achieve,
and the two together make for quite a potent formula. So the gateway
needs to take account of all of that and we cannot just look at
it in isolation.
(Mr Wood) If there are to be gateways, I would prefer
two because I think there is a confusion here between benefits
and work. I do think there is a real confusion in the minds of
disabled people who have recently experienced the Benefit Integrity
Programme, and the Benefit Agency now for many disabled people
is in disrepute and they are not trusted and, more than that,
they are feared. To add to what Neil said, you have also to take
into account that people who have come out of work, people who
have become disabled while working, through injury, accident or
illness, are quite often coming out of work being labelled disabled
for the reason they have come out of work which is itself a very
negative experience and would not raise one's expectations or
make them look forward to further employment and repeat some of
the experiences they have had. So you have people coming into
this gateway from two directions, you have people who were non-disabled
people, who were in work, became disabled people and then came
out of work—and I am pleased the Government is going to
concentrate on job retention because that is absolutely fundamental
to disabled people retaining work—and you have people, as
Neil described, coming from the other direction. It is not just
necessarily about their experiences in life. It is the case that
disabled people have a general overall experience of not being
asked and not being able to make decisions because those decisions
are often taken away from them. We are probably the only group
of people who from cradle to grave have a whole range of professionals
who make decisions about our lives. This is a normal, every day
experience for disabled people. One of the things we will come
on to, I am sure, when we talk about personal advisers, is whether
the introduction of yet another range of professionals into our
lives is a good or a bad thing, or whether we should be encouraging
disabled people to take advantage of better information or better
advice, if you like, where they can make decisions rather than
other people making decisions. I think there is a confusion here,
a confusion of ideas. It is certainly the case that disabled people
should be entitled to the benefits they are entitled to if they
cannot work, and we know in many cases that is not happening.
Clearly it should be the case that if disabled people wish to
work and are able to work, they should have that opportunity,
but I do not see how the two necessarily fit together.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. I want
to move on to John Healey but before I do so perhaps I can remind
all of my colleagues that we are going to have to finish by about
quarter to six, so forgive us but we are in something of a hurry.
Mr Healey
120. You heard the last evidence session.
(Mr Wood) Yes.
121. You have expressed some concerns about
how this process is going to be designed and how it will operate
and how personal advisers and registration and orientation officers
will be trained and how they will act.
122. You are both national organisations, are
you involved at all in the preparation of the pilot?
(Mr Wood) No.
(Mr Betteridge) No.
123. Why not?
(Mr Wood) We have not been invited to
be.
124. You have made no approaches?
(Mr Wood) No.
125. Can you see any circumstances in which
you might become involved in the design or delivery of Single
Gateway?
(Mr Betteridge) RADAR is keen to contribute
and is going to contribute to the conference taking place, I believe,
in mid June looking at the training needs of personal advisers.
Not being an organisation with the sort of infrastructure that
provides that sort of service delivery, I think it is very difficult
to be more hands on with pilots. In terms of the policy aspect
and the advisory aspect it is really important that disabled people
and their organisations are involved from the very beginning.
126. Are any of your member organisations involved?
(Mr Betteridge) Some of them are, yes,
and we are talking to them about that through our regular member
meetings. I think one of the unique things about this, as opposed
to any other forms of service delivery you could compare it with,
is that if you do not involve the opinions and needs of disabled
people at every stage, it ain't going to work. You can look at
social services, you can look at housing, you can play number
games with those sorts of services, but this is about getting
disabled people to come to trust the process that they are being
asked to take part in. It is about that volition, that willingness,
to own [the process] that will make them more and more work ready.
To engender that kind of trust you need to be building in from
the early stage, both in terms of training as personal advisers
and how you assess the whole rolling out of the programme, the
views of disabled people because that is fundamental, that is
crucial to the success of this.
(Mr Wood) I think I would add to that by saying that
the issue of course for many disabled people is not just about
work, it is about independent living and it is about control over
one's own life. There is far more to that than work. In our own
movement one of the things that we are well known for are our
Centres for Independent Living which are set around the country.
Resource centres run by disabled people providing direct services,
providing counselling, providing support, and support into work
is exactly the sort of thing that they could do. It is more than
just about work. I put it to you that for many disabled people
work is the end of the process. There are many, many issues that
we have to get sorted out in our minds before work even appears
on the agenda. If we need personal support to be up and about
during the day, out of bed in the morning, if we need that sort
of assistance, if we need transport, if we need mobility assistance,
it is only as we obtain those things and gain the confidence of
being in society and moving around that one is going to move towards
maybe thinking about work and even as the first stage there, it
has certainly been my case in working in the movement that many
disabled people start off as volunteers, they start off working
in an informal capacity and then move on.
127. In very much that spirit then what are
the pros and cons you see for the people you represent with, say,
call centre technology as a way of avoiding location bound interview
or indeed the development of electronic interaction, digital TV
and other methods like that?
(Mr Wood) I think that is inevitably
going to happen anyway but whether it is a good thing or a bad
thing is debateable. Firstly we are assuming that all disabled
people have access to technology but we are talking about people
who are among the poorest people in society. It may be that some
do, I would imagine the vast majority of disabled people probably
do not have and even if they did I think it is also about how
one interprets the information, the difference between picking
up a leaflet and actually understanding what the leaflet says.
For disabled people who find it so difficult to get information
anyway, having the chance to sit with somebody to have it explained,
which is what we do in our CILs—Centres for Independent
Living—can be absolutely crucial.
Mr Pond
128. I want to talk to you about compulsion.
It has always been a disappointment to me to find out that the
contestants in Just a Minute knew the subject in advance.
You know the questions in advance. It is important because Neil
spoke a few moments ago about trust and Richard especially in
the evidence which you gave to the Social Security Select Committee
on Disability Living Allowance and Benefit Integrity Project you
talked about the climate of fear that has been created. In those
circumstances, is it not necessary, first of all, to get people
involved in the process before you can win their trust and overcome
the fear that people might have and, therefore, is there not a
case for saying at least the interview process should be compulsory?
(Mr Betteridge) I think disabled people
historically have built quite a knowledge of wedges, some of which
have thinner ends than others. We are operating really in a climate
where I think almost verbatim I could say that the Government
have said that it is the Government's responsibility to provide
help, referring to the Gateway and so on, and it is the individual's
responsibility to take it up. That is one strand of compulsion
which seems to be suggesting that this is the `right' thing to
do. There is a kind of subtext there which is quite ethical, quite
moral, and it is not just about going to an interview to discuss
your current circumstances. I think when you see articles such
as the one carried recently by the Daily Mail where they
referred to the Gateway in a context where, I think, the beginning
of the quote was "the biggest ever clamp down on the work
shy", we have to realise that this programme, much of which
we welcome, is actually not operating in a vacuum, there is a
very real context there just as the Benefits Integrity Project
was taking place when there were lots of stories in the press
about disabled people being scroungers and parasites, so that
context is crucial.
129. If you were drafting the regulation to
determine which categories of claimants might be exempted from
the requirement for an interview or for whom the interview might
be deferred, could you give us an indication of what those regulations
would look like if you were the author?
(Mr Wood) I think I would have to say
I would not start from there with all respect. Again, the issue
is about what the purpose of the service is and it is reflected
to some extent in compulsion. I would have thought if the agency
concerned was so confident that the service was going to do what
it was designed to do, that people would be queuing at its doors
because we would have vast numbers of people who would want to
check their benefit entitlement and we would presumably have people
who were interested in work saying: "This is somewhere I
can go. I know it is going to be approachable. I know I am going
to get the information I want" but the compulsion bit makes
it feel like something else, it does not feel like it is going
to be a friendly welcoming process that is designed to assist
people. It does feel really, really heavy. I suppose it feels
ultimately that it is about getting people out of the benefit
system. It is like another BIP in a way, it is another examination
of people's entitlement designed to get them off the benefit.
The question about regulations and the question about exemptions
to groups, I think it is very difficult to exempt groups per
se. One might think of, say, terminally ill people as one
group but even as some people said before about people who have
mental illnesses, that does not mean that people could not work
or would not necessarily wish to work. I think the issue is about
the system being voluntary and attracting into the system people
who do want to work. Without putting them into categories and
saying: "Those people in that category do not get an interview"
but to say to people "Actually if you would like an interview
we would quite like to welcome you, we would quite like to talk
through the possibilities". What sort of message does that
send out to people to say "No, this is not for you"?
(Mr Betteridge) Yes, I agree with that and it would
be contradictory, I think, to create exemptions around type or
category of impairment. That may seem slightly at odds with what
some of our organisations were saying about a year ago as to how
the Benefits Integrity Project could be operated, but we do have
a different situation here. Although it was helpful to the whole
review process in terms of BIP and post-BIP to look at groups
of people for whom really it would be inappropriate to receive
a review, here we are looking much more at people who are willing
and able to do some work given the right support and right circumstances.
It could be very positive indeed if that trust we talked about
earlier is engendered. I certainly agree with Richard that if
people know they will get a benefits check to see whether they
are getting all they are entitled to, if they know the personal
adviser can work in a multi-disciplinary way and can actually
put you in touch and will do some of the talking for you in terms
of other local groups such as housing and social services, then
that trust will naturally be earned. That is where information
plays a part because if the person who leads that discussion,
the personal adviser, is well-armed with useful information, that
ownership will begin to happen. So we need several strands going
on at once. My understanding of the role the personal adviser
has and the flexibility and the freedom the personal adviser has
in determining who should go forward and consider work and who
may not, I think ties in with the evaluation and monitoring of
the whole thing. What criteria are we going to use to judge whether
personal advisers are (a) doing those things well and (b) doing
those things consistently if there is so much carte blanche?
So while to get sensitivity into the system you need flexibility,
actually measuring that is a hell of a task.
130. If the alternative to fairly tightly drafted
regulations is the whole issue of discretion, giving personal
advisers a considerable amount of discretion, and Richard used
the phrase "another tier of professionals who would be making
decisions on behalf of these claimants"—and certainly
I hope that will not be the case, they will be empowering these
people to make their own decisions—what about the role of
discretion? Do you have any anxieties about that?
(Mr Betteridge) That ties in very closely
with my previous point. I think I have tackled that one there.
(Mr Wood) It is difficult, is it not? You are talking
about deferrals, are you, discretion as to whether to interview
or not to interview?
131. Yes.
(Mr Wood) Without some sort of guidelines,
it feels really loose. What sort of information will disabled
people get about whether they have been deferred, and why they
have been deferred? One of the problems it seems to me is that
there are a lot of assumptions made in what is going to happen
here about support networks which might be there, the resources
which are going to be there, the number of people the personal
advisers can work with to provide support. I think what custom
and practice is showing is that those support networks are not
necessarily there and the resources and people who ought to be
there are not necessarily there. I think that is borne out by
the fact that, for example, on employment services we have had
a whole train of professionals—we have had DROs, now we
have the PACT teams, we have access to work—and here we
are with still over nearly 60 per cent of eligible disabled people
unemployed. Some of that is to do with employer attitudes. It
is strange that the employer threshold was only reduced to 15.
Why was it not reduced all the way down to two, to have brought
all employers under the DDA and then we could have done some work
around the legislation, we could have done some work around real
training programmes because employers would have been motivated
to participate? We are making assumptions about further and higher
education and training opportunities, that they are accessible,
that they are resourced, and I just do not think they are. I think
the fact that so many disabled people remain unemployed despite
a host of interventions over the years and advocates and professionals
speaks for itself. I am not sure what it is that personal advisers
are going to have by way of resources that other people have not
had access to.
Mrs Humble
132. Can I go on and explore with you the role
of the personal adviser and these registration and orientation
officers —
(Mr Wood) You like that title, don't
you!
133. I am going to work on it! I am open to
suggestions as long as they are printable! Clearly that registration
and orientation interview is going to be very important. When
the officer is taking details of the individual's personal circumstances,
part of that is going to be asking them if they have any personal
needs which need to be taken into account when they are referred
on to the personal adviser, so they clearly will need skills and
training. So, differentiating the role of the registration and
orientation officer and the personal adviser, what sort of skills
and training do you think the registration and orientation officer
should have and then I will ask you the same question about the
personal advisers?
(Mr Betteridge) I think it is a bit like
brushing up on language to go on holiday. It is great to learn
a few phrases but the trouble is somebody answers you back in
the same language. If the R&Os are going to be phoning people
up to address in some circumstances very difficult issues about
the people's range of needs who may have to attend the interview,
they have to be able to deal with what comes back, and that to
me seems to call for a similar set of skills to those you would
expect from the personal advisers if we want the sensitivity to
which we are committed to show itself. Similarly, a crucial part
of the role of the personal advisers—and this picks up on
an earlier question about them being generalists—is that
the person in that job knows their own limitations and similarly
knows when to defer or refer on. So if the nature of the beast
is to be a generalist, that person must have quick and ready access
to specialists, especially for people with more complex impairments.
134. Yes, you mention that at 6.5 in your submission,
and that in a way is an open question. Do you think that disabled
people will be disadvantaged by having a generalist personal adviser
and how do you think we can address that as an issue?
(Mr Betteridge) I refer to my previous
answer, as they say. It could be a very positive thing to have
a generalist who is able to deal with a wide range of clients
but also I think it is important that that person knows what referral
mechanisms are at their disposal. To pick up on the previous point
about the very initial contact, one of the ways that trust can
be engendered and built up is if the person speaking to the disabled
person, whether they be the R&O or the personal adviser, can
display local knowledge. If they can show the person they understand
what the local transport links are like and they understand what
it is like getting from where they live to the office where the
interview is going to be held, that trust will be there from the
start and we all know how important first impressions are.
135. Richard, what do you think about the skills
and training of R&Os?
(Mr Wood) Training and skills are obviously
vital but so is experience, so is empathy, so is understanding,
and we would like to see significant numbers of disabled people
employed as personal advisers because, just going back to our
own experience of running our own organisations, that is absolutely
crucial, particularly when you are referring people for counselling
and getting to the heart of what it is that is going on in a person's
life. In terms of how I would like to be met if I was going to
one of these centres, I would like to be met by the same person
who was going to work with me all the way through the programme.
I do not particularly like the idea of meeting, as one of the
witnesses said before, unfortunately somebody who is going to
be regarded as a receptionist, somebody who is just out front
to take a few details. I would like to get straight into the heart
of the matter and speak with somebody who I am going to have a
contract with, or a contact with. Why am I going to be, again,
shifted from pillar to post?
Ms Buck
136. Just following up that point about experience
and empathy, it is incredibly hard to legislate for that. In a
sense I have an image of a quality personal adviser, which I am
sure you have, which is a bit like an elephant: it is very hard
to describe but you know what it is when you see one. How are
we going to ensure those vital qualities are present, not just
in the proportion of advisers who are people with disabilities
and indeed people from ethnic minorities and so forth but across
the board? What kind of contribution can you make to making sure
that rather nebulous concept gets turned into an actual checklist
of qualities that we can then insist upon as being premium requisites
to the training programme?
(Mr Wood) I would say equality training
is absolutely critical. It should be a compulsory part of the
training of anyone who is going to provide the service.
137. How do you train for empathy? You should
do but I just want you to get specific, show me how you would
do it?
(Mr Wood) I think what I would do is
as part of the training I would put some of these advisers into
our CILs for a week or a couple of days and let them answer calls
there and let them meet people there and let them interact with
disabled people who are dealing with these issues all the time.
In that way I suppose you build an understanding. Unless you are
another disabled person, whether you have a true empathy, it is
difficult I suppose, I do not know whether you would actually
achieve that but I do think it is important to have an understanding
of what issues are around in disabled people's lives. I think
a lot of assumptions are made that work is something that exists
on its own. As I said before, there are so many issues going on
in our lives that determine whether we can work, whether we feel
we are able to work, the whole confidence that we have of people.
Ms Buck: To follow that up again, what can we
ask for from the Government in terms of the training programme
and the selection programme? You have come up with one very, very
good organisation but between the two organisations and other
organisations can you come up with a number of specific examples
that can be practical, concrete suggestions for creating, churning
out exactly the kind of people we want sitting in front of the
desk? Unless you do—looking at it with your specialist experience
and others from theirs—some of these people will be excellent
but a lot will not be.
Chairman
138. Perhaps you would like to consider that
and write to us.
(Mr Wood) Yes [1].
Chairman: Joan has one small point and then
I am going to Andrew.
Mrs Humble
139. It follows on in a way. You have already
had experience of how the New Deal for Disabled People has been
working and what sort of lessons have you learned that you can
pass on to ask about the role of the personal adviser. In a way
it is looking at evaluation and judging exactly the sort of qualities
that Karen Buck has been talking about. Are there any lessons
you would like to tell us about?
(Mr Betteridge) Two particular ones from
the people I have spoken to in terms of the New Deal. One is around
continuity and having the same person you can refer back to, even
if that person cannot give you the answer they know where you
can find it. Building that up long term is very important. The
other links in with that in a way because it is how much more
powerful the training for people in roles such as personal advisers
can be if they have actually heard the issues direct from the
horse's mouth, so to speak. So, for example, some of the advisers
I know have had training sessions where disabled guest speakers
have been along and they have really brought to life some of the
issues that have been a bit nebulous when you read about them
in abstract, where someone has described how every time they change
school or move to college or take up new training they have to
develop relationships with a whole new set of agencies and individuals.
That is so much more powerful than just reading about it. That
continuity is important. I think it is very easy to sort of start
to factor in some quite specific tangible assets of the training
on that basis starting from the first principles of listening
to people who have gone through some of the difficulties that
we are trying to address with the Gateway.
(Mr Wood) Very
quickly I would like to add to that. Firstly, I think one of the
most significant outcomes of the New Deal for Disabled People,
as I understand it from information that I received, is that 13
out of 1,500 disabled people who have been through the programme
have got jobs and if it is only 13 out of 1,500 who have got jobs
that says a lot to me about what is going on here. That is not
a criticism of the advisers and it would not be a criticism of
the advisers who would be operating under this scheme but we must
be careful that these people do not have magic wands, they cannot
stop prejudice in employers who hold prejudices. They cannot create
transport systems, they cannot create training, education, support.
They cannot stop local authorities charging disabled people for
services and so on and sorting out all their benefits. They cannot
do any of those things, they can only work with the resources
that they have got. I think what we hope certainly, and I am sure
I speak for RADAR as well, as disability organisations is firstly
that we will have fully comprehensive legislation, which we were
told we would have and now clearly we are not going to get and,
as I say, the employer exemptions under the DDA will not change
significantly enough to make any impact on employers. 93 per cent
of employers are still exempt.
1 Ev. p. 75. Back
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