Chamber and committees

Do you provide funding at least if some physical changes are needed?

Is there any common theme as to the size or type of employer that is more amenable to taking on disabled people?

So there is no link to size or the ability to absorb that.

Elizabeth, do you want to comment?

That would be interesting, I am sure.

Philip, what has the experience been in your area?

Again, that would be interesting. Thank you.

I turn to Oxana MacGregor-Gunn but maybe I will ask a slightly different question. As there is no data, do we have any impression of how good jobcentres are at catering for the needs of disabled people? Do they have the skills to do it? Based on what I have heard, it does not sound as though it would give you as much confidence as you might wish.

Given that you seem to be validating the position of the young people whom we spoke to, which was quite negative about what they were given in schools and at jobcentres, what feedback is being given on this? Do jobcentres know that they are not doing a great job? Do schools know that they are not doing a great job? Who is giving the feedback?

Following on from that, you obviously want workplaces to be inclusive and you want any required adaptations to be done for the person who is hopefully going there. If they were going for a short-term placement, to what extent would you expect employers to make those adaptations and changes to accommodate the person?

I want to pick up on the references that several of you have made to working in partnership with the Department for Work and Pensions, jobcentres and all the rest of it. Do we have any understanding of disabled people’s first-hand experience of dealing with those agencies? To again refer to the young people who we met last week, the ones who I spoke to were unanimous that the experiences that they had at the jobcentres or the DWP were less than good, because the people there did not understand the person who they were dealing with. The young people had various degrees of autism and so on, and they felt that they were just parked and pushed aside.

Do we have any data on that experience? Do we have an understanding from first-hand experience as to how this is working?