After hitting send on myAccess to Work grant application, I got an automated email in response.
‘You should hear from uswithin 12 weeks,’ it read – in February this year.
I was perplexed.
Access to Work isa government scheme that helpsto cover the extra costs of things that allow a disabled person to work. For example,if somebody needs to get taxis to work, a British Sign Language interpreter or a specially adapted chair, this grant helps a disabled person to enter the workplace on an equal footing (or, at least, it should).
In my case, I needed a headset for when my hands aren’t working well and I need to dictate instead of type, as I have a rare neurological condition that affects my hands, arms, legs and feet.
So reading that it could take up tothree months to hear back about my application, I thought it was a really long time to continue working in a way that is both painful and less efficient.
But you get what you’re given, so I waited.
That was almost 30 weeks ago and I’m still no closer to getting an answer.
This was the second time in my life that I’d applied for such a grant –the first time was in 2012 and, back then, it had been a pretty easy process.
I had justbecome a self-employed writer, but needed a specialist chair and an adapted keyboard to make my laptop and working space more accessible.
That’s when someone told me about Access to Work grants.
I thought it was a great idea in theory because there’s already so much relentless admin and extra expenses when you are disabled. Scope, the disability charity, estimates that households with at least one disabled adult or child face extra costs of £975 a month on average.
So I applied for Access to Work in 2012 and was given a named contact. I talked her through my needs, I was assessed to work out what I needed, and then she approved the assessors’ recommendations. I bought the equipment, filled in a form, and Access to Work paid me what I’d spent. It was quick and relatively easy.
The equipment Access to Work recommended and paid for meant I wasn’t facing quite as many disadvantages. It was incredibly helpful to have my laptop positioned in the best way for my posture, a keyboard that reduced pain in my hands when I was typing all day, and a chair that supported my body.
Fast forward 12 years, though, and I was increasingly struggling to type.
My condition is progressive and there are days when my fingers just do not hit the keys I need them to. It’s painful and it’s frustrating. I need my typing to be able to keep up with my brain!
So a headset, which would improve the accuracy of the speech recognition tools I use, would help a lot.
It’sa relatively inexpensive gadget but one of the benefits of my previous Access to Work experience was that they didn’t just pay for tools, they made recommendations – and without that, I didn’t know which headset was the best for this particular accessibility requirement.
Plus, what’s inexpensive to an organisation as vast as the DWP is not necessarily inexpensive to your average journalist.
I figured the process would be as quick and easy as it had been in 2012.
But, as we all now know, I’ve been waiting for over six months.
In late July, I gave the DWP a ring to find out what was happening with my application.
I spoke witha kind man whoexplained that they’d had to extend their processing time to 24 weeks, and that they were, at that point, only justprocessing applications from January 25.
He went on to say that, as I’d submitted my application on February 8, my application would most likely only start to be looked at in mid-August, after which I would be assessed.
I was exasperated. How can it take so long? What on earth has gone wrong with the process?
More than that though, I am justtired. Life as a disabled person in modern Britain is an ongoing challenge. It’s common to have complete strangers call me a scrounger when I’m out and about, purely on the basis of the crutches that help me walk, and having to fight for every little thing really grinds you down. Not to mention that chronic pain is exhausting.
So I did what we alldo when we are infuriated. I posted on X.
‘How does the government plan to get disabled people to start or continue work when it’s going to be 26 weeks (mid Aug) before they even start to look at my application?’ I wrote.
Clearly I wasn’t alone in my frustrations, as my notifications went wild after that.I got 125 likes, 74 retweets and several repliesfrom others who have also been let down by Access to Work.
In terms of a response,when I approached the DWP they told me: ‘The average timescale for an Access to Work application to have a decision for April 2024 was 43.9 days.’
However,they said that this was unverified data that should be ‘treated with extreme caution’. I know why, of course, given that I’ve been waiting 201 days (so far).
I just can’t see how this can be allowed to continue.
The new Labour government is complaining that not enough disabled people are in work. Yet, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Liz Kendall, just launched a ‘blueprint for fundamental reform’ but didn’t mention Access to Work once.
How will she get disabled people into work – and keep us in work – if it takes 26 weeks minimum for someone to even start considering whether they’ll fund the support worker or the special computer monitor needed?
What employer is going to keep a job offer open for six months on the off-chance that the DWP comes through with what’s required?
Why is the government not prioritising this?
Unfortunately I do not know, because Liz Kendall did not respond to my questions.
All I will say is thatdisabled people are experts at problem solving. We can adapt to the most extreme of circumstances and our resourcefulness gets us a long way. But there are times we need a bit of extra support.
Access to Work should be a fund that enables us to work without burdening either ourselves or our employers with additional costs. Being disabled is already very expensive, and we don’t want employers to have an excuse to not hire us because we’d cost them money.
Instead, the systemis letting us down. We aredemonised for not working, but face huge barriers when we try to work, scuppered by bureaucracy and a hostile system.
I don’t know how we can win – or if we’re even supposed to.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.