Today the DWP announced the end of the Work
Capability Assessment - not in so many words obviously, that's not how they
operate - but its new Disability and Health Employment Strategy has been
published on its website.
In essence the press release said that, in future, the DWP will try to address the barriers faced by people with disabilities and chronic ill-health as those people actually try to get into work, rather than asking a doctor or nurse to make a clinical assessment of the person's impairments before trying to deduce what problems that individual might face, hypothetically speaking, in an unspecified workplace. As the WCA is - despite its name - precisely that kind of generic disability assessment with no specific job in mind, the DWP has as good as sounded the death knell for the disastrous and scandalous WCA.
The strategy is only about getting people into work; there is no indication today that people for whom work is impossible - people with severe cognitive impairment, for example - will not be offered practical and financial support. A 'delivery paper' will be published next year, but nothing is likely to happen in practice before the next election, and then, who knows?
Today's Press Release
