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11 May 2006 : Column 502W—continued
Disability Living Allowance
Rosie Cooper: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions pursuant to the answer of 20 October 2006, Official Report, column 1198W, on disability living allowance, what proportion of people in West Lancashire awarded disability living allowance on the basis of behavioural disorder, including enuresis and hyperactivity, were children. [64083]
Mrs. McGuire: The administration of disability living allowance is a matter for the Chief Executive of the Disability and Carers Service, Mr. Terry Moran. He will write to the hon. Member with the information requested.
Letter from Terry Moran, dated 11 May 2006:
You asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 20th October 2006 Official Report column 1198W on disability living allowance what proportion of people in West Lancashire awarded disability living allowance on the basis of behavioural disorder including enuresis and hyperactivity were children.
The Minister for Disabled People, Anne McGuire MP, promised you a substantive reply from the Chief Executive of the Disability and Carers Service.
As at November 2005, there were 5,840 Disability Living Allowance claimants living in the Lancashire West Parliamentary Constituency of which 140 claimants have their main disabling condition recorded as “behavioural disorder including enuresis and hyperactivity”. Of these, 100 claimants (73.8%) are aged under 16.
DEFINITIONS AND CONVENTIONS:“-“ Nil or Negligible;”.” Not applicable; Caseload figures are rounded to the nearest ten. Totals may not sum due to rounding.
SOURCE: DWP Information Directorate: Work and Pensions Longitudinal Study for totals.
Notes:
1 Totals shows the number of people in receipt of an allowance, and excludes people with entitlement where the payment has been suspended, for example if they are in hospital.
2. Parliamentary Constituencies have been allocated using the ONS postcode directory.
3. Some claimants have more than one disabling condition, only the main disabling condition is recorded on the IFD datasets.
Mr. Hunt: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what discussions his Department has had with charities and campaign groups on the Disability Living Allowance application form; and whether recommendations were made relating to the form following such meetings. [66158]
Mrs. McGuire: The administration of Disability Living Allowance is a matter for the Chief Executive of the Disability and Carers Service, Mr. Terry Moran. He will write to the hon. Member with the information requested.
You asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what discussions his Department has had with charities and campaign groups on the Disability Living Allowance application form; and whether recommendations were made relating to the form following such meetings.
The Minister for Disabled People, Anne McGuire MP, promised you a substantive reply from the Chief Executive of the Disability and Carers Service.
The establishment of DCS as an Agency on 1 November 2004 marked an increased focus on understanding the needs of its customers through early and proactive consultation with customer representative organisations. As changes have been made to some of the Disability Living Allowance (DLA) claim forms over the last year, DCS has undertaken specific consultation activity with the DCS Advisory Forum and where appropriate the wider lobby. The DCS Advisory Forum is the Disability and Carers Service's (DCS) main mechanism for consulting with the Voluntary and Community Sector. The forum was originally established in 1998 to provide advice and guidance to officials of DCS and the Department on the impact of change initiatives on disabled customers.
We are currently reviewing the DLA National claim form. This will be issued to the DCS Advisory Forum in May. Full consideration will be given to any comments received and full responses to those comments will be provided.
In July 2005, we consulted with the DCS Advisory Forum on the proposed DLA Adult Claim form to be used within the Customer Case Management (CCM) test taking place at Manchester and Bootle Disability Benefit Centres (DBCs). At special events in July and September 2005, we also consulted with a high number of local voluntary and community organisations within the Manchester and Bootle DBC catchment areas.
In January 2006, we returned to the DCS Advisory Forum to consult with them on the proposed second version of the CCM claim form.
As a result of this consultation activity, a number of suggestions were submitted, many of which we have been able to incorporate. This has led to improvements being made to the form which will make it easier for customers to understand and answer the questions; provides customers with the option to describe the help they need and the difficulties they have at the end of each question; the layout, format and wording have also been improved and makes the form visibly clearer and easy to read.
When a suggestion has been made but not acted upon, for example where the suggestion would unfairly advantage one group of disabled people at the expense of other groups, reasons were given to the Forum to explain why the suggestion was not taken up.
On 20 March 2006, the provision for customers to make e-claims via the internet for a range of DWP benefits was introduced, including DLA and AA. DCS took the lead on consulting on behalf of the Department with Interactive Demonstration and Preview events of the DWP e-Services taking place in Manchester and Birmingham in November 2005. These events provided customer representative groups with early sight of the DLA, Attendance Allowance, State Pension UK, Jobcentre Plus, and Child Support maintenance application e-forms. The DCS Advisory Forum, Jobcentre Plus Key Stakeholders and the Pension Service Partnerships Against Poverty Group were invited to attend these events, with representation from wider customer representative organisations also attending on the day. As a result of the comments received at these events, improvements to the DLA e-claim form are to be made. Steps are now being taken to include the provision for customer representatives to include their details, an option to provide Textphone details and increasing the size of text boxes.
Our consultation approach via the formal DCS Advisory Forum, the wider lobby where appropriate, and via customer feedback channels allows for continuous dialogue and suggestions from our customers or their representatives as to how our claim forms can be improved.
I hope you find this information helpful.
Disabled People
Tom Levitt: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if he will make a statement on his Department's progress in fulfilling its statutory obligation as a public body of promoting the rights of disabled people. [66008]
Mrs. McGuire: The Disability Discrimination Act 2005 placed new duties on public authorities to promote equality for disabled people, ‘the Disability Equality Duty'. This Department (DWP) has taken the following steps to meet the Disability Equality Duty:
DWP is host to the Office for Disability Issues (ODI), which was launched on 1 December 2005 to take forward the Government's strategy for improving the life chances of disabled people. One element of this work will be to overset the effective implementation of the Disability Equality Duty. The ODI is working in partnership with the Disability Rights Commission to support and encourage Departments to commit to meaningful actions that will improve their policies and services and realise the potential of their diverse workforces.
The Department is already working towards the publication of its disability equality schemes by 4 December 2006. The process was formally launched in April 2006 and will mean both central units and agencies involving disabled people in developing action plans for tackling problem areas and identifying positive actions to address these. We have also already begun planning for the Secretary of State's report due in 2008.
DWP is currently revising its existing guidance on accessible communications with a view to introducing a new standard for information accessibility. This set of standards will form part of the disability equality scheme referred to earlier.
We have commissioned public access audits of all its premises used by the public during 2003. A total of 1,735 buildings were surveyed, and a programme of public access improvement works commissioned on 1,032 sites which are scheduled for completion in June 2006. The existing public access provisions are subject to annual review and any future additional requirement is built into the annual maintenance work programmes.
The Department wants staff to understand and embrace diversity and an important part of achieving this has been the development of a diversity toolkit which makes all our diversity and equality policy and information easily accessible in one place on an internal website. The toolkit also is now being used by around 70 other organisations.
The Department is keen to ensure we meet the workplace needs of disabled staff and potential staff and recently DWP has run two pilot exercises on a
revised process for delivering reasonable workplace adjustments for staff. The development of the new process was partly in response to the length of time it took to assess and put reasonable adjustments into place, and partly to ensure that the recommended adjustment was the most suitable for that individual. A third pilot is due to start shortly. This will be followed by a formal evaluation exercise. On completion of the first two pilots, and subject to the evaluation, we will commence planning for national implementation across the Department and agencies.
DWP encourages all business units to consider the potential impact of policy and services on all equality groups, ahead of future legislation. For example, at least three impact assessments have been completed to date by the Disability and Carers Service, taking into account disability, with a number of additional assessments in the process of being completed.
The Department has been working in partnership with the Employers' Forum on Disability in order to address the needs of its disabled customers. In particular, it has contributed, along with other public and private organisations, to the interactive "Disability Confident" training resource pack which uses both video and DVD format. This addresses the key principles of dealing with disabled people in general, and particularly communications issues relating to those with specific impairments. This earned a special commendation in the prestigious ‘World of Learning Awards'.
Both the Minister for Disabled People and senior officials participate in an annual series of meetings with disabled customers and those with disability interests to explain current and planned policy, and to gain a better knowledge of people's views and concerns.
DWP consults with staff on disability issues through a National Disability Staff Network Group. The Department has recently reviewed all of the staff network groups with the intention of raising their profile and enabling them to contribute to successful diversity outcomes for the Department. Representatives from all of the groups have met with the recently appointed Permanent Secretary twice and he has committed to meet with them on a quarterly basis.
DWP also analyses, and acts upon, staff perceptions on diversity issues in the annual staff attitude survey; and meets regularly with trade unions side to consider disability along with other diversity issues. In addition, staff can raise diversity issues at regular staff forum events held around the country and via a site on the DWP intranet.
Incapacity Benefit
Mr. Laws: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what assessment she has made of the reasons for the change in the number of people claiming incapacity benefit for mental and behavioural disorders for the period 1995 to 2005; and if she will make a statement. [63302]
Mrs. McGuire: The department has undertaken substantial in-house analysis to determine both the trends and the reasons for the change in the number of those claiming incapacity benefit for mental and behavioural disorders.
The rise in the number of people with mental and behavioural disorders claiming incapacity benefits mirrors a rise in the overall number of individuals in the population with mental health problems.
Claimants with mental and behavioural disorders as a primary diagnosis now make up an increasing proportion of the overall caseload accounting for almost 40 per cent. of the total caseload, compared with 25 per cent. in the mid 1990s; although growth in the proportion of the caseload with mental and behavioural disorders has been slowing in recent quarters. This is both because they make up an increasing proportion of inflows and because they have lower off-flow rates than other groups. It follows that, people with mental health conditions are, on average, much more likely to become long-term claimants.
Pension Credit
Mr. Evennett: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what the current application processing time is for pension credit. [67878]
Mr. Timms: The Pension Service's internal target for processing applications for pension credit is 10 working days. The average time taken during March 2006 was 9.01 working days. The year to date figure is 8.79 working days.
Recruitment
Mr. Jenkins: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how much (a) his Department and
(b) its agencies spent on recruitment, search and selection agencies in each of the last five years. [68334]
Mrs. McGuire: This information is not collated within this Department and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.
Staff Development
David Simpson: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what the total cost was of (a) staff away days and (b) staff team building exercises in his Department in each of the last three years. [68993]
Mrs. McGuire: Full information on the total cost of staff training away days and team building exercises organised by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is not collated and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.
Transactional Processes
Mr. Philip Hammond: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what steps he has taken to modernise transactional processes within (a) his Department and (b) the agencies for which he has responsibility in the last three years. [51988]
Mrs. McGuire: The Department and its agencies are in the course of extensive modernisation, which is being delivered through a number of substantial business change projects.
The information is in the following table.
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