Exclusive: DWP refuses to provide details of mental health work coach trial and its ‘dramatic results’

Kendall’s department won’t provide details or methodology of trial she says justifies forcing stressful visits on mental health patients

The government has been rightly criticised for its plan to make people in hospital for treatment for severe mental health issues receive visits from ‘work coaches’ to get them back to work – government employees with the power to impose benefit sanctions on any claimants they decide are not doing enough to find a job.

Work and Pensions (DWP) Secretary Liz Kendall claimed that a trial of the plan had produced ‘dramatic results’ and that this justified the government proceeding with the plan – but the DWP has refused to provide details of the trial or its methodology. When asked by Skwawkbox to provide these details, a DWP spokesperson said that it would not make any information available beyond Kendall’s comments.

Some observers have speculated that Kendall’s plan may be an extension of the ‘Work Well’ scheme operating at South London and Maudsley NHS trust. However, that scheme does not involve work coaches entering hospitals as Kendall and her department say they plan.

Grassroots mental health group Recovery in the Bin (RITB) has condemned Kendall’s dangerous scheme in unequivocal terms:

We question the supposed evidential claims being made by ministers; they cite no independently verifiable sources.

Secondly the distress this is causing is simply more cruelty, when you are in crisis you need safety and support, not DWP pen pushers evangelising about some mythical cure-all miracle called ‘work’.

This is both infantilising and victimising. The DWP remain a threat to our lives and this only gives them more weapons to assault us with.

Paula Peters of Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) said:

People in mental distress in an in-patient mental health psychiatric unit are in deep distress, in crisis and suicidal in many cases.

To place work coaches in a mental health in-patient psychiatric unit is cruel, callous and incredibly dangerous.

This will cause further worsening of suicidal symptoms and distress and trauma.

We urge Labour to rethink this horrific policy and allow people in mental distress and in traumatic crisis to get the support they need.

Around 300,000 needless deaths have already been linked to the policies of the 2010-2024 Tory governments. Kendall’s DWP is currently fighting in court to prevent release of statistics of how many people died because of Tory austerity and the ‘conscious cruelty’ of its treatment of the sick, disabled or unemployed – which led almost half of disabled people claiming benefits to attempt suicide according to a 2018 report.

Rather than reverse these policies, Keir Starmer, Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Kendall are planning to intensify them and force almost half a million more vulnerable people into poverty, as well as demanding that even the seriously ill or disabled look for work.

Benefit sanctions, which DWP work coaches can impose and have forced hundreds of thousands of people into poverty, breach international human rights law according to United Nations poverty specialist Philip Alston. They have been strongly linked to worsening mental health.

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