Therapists employed by the state will begin consultations with the long-term sick this week after ministers expressed frustration that the NHS was not doing enough to get people back work.
Pilot sessions will begin in London and Birmingham, where physiotherapists, mental health counsellors and stroke specialists hired by the Department for Work and Pensions will offer assessments to hundreds of people claiming sickness benefits in an effort to reduce the number classed as unfit to work.
Ministers hope to expand the scheme by hiring more therapists to offer a route back to work for the 2.6 million long-term sick, fearing that the NHS has no incentive to get people well enough for employment.
Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary, has spoken of the need to end a system in which GPs are “just ticking a box that says ‘can’t possibly do any work’” after a brief consultation.
Long-term sickness is at record levels after a surge in disability claims since the pandemic. Mental health and joint problems are among the biggest causes, for reasons that are not fully understood, although delays in getting NHS treatment and the rise in working from home have been suggested as possible factors.
As part of the reforms, assessments for universal credit and personal independence payments will be carried out by specialists to better judge what work claimants could be capable of doing.
Ministers hope this will lead to more people being classed as fit for some work as they adopt a stick-and-carrot approach that combines boosting support schemes for the long-term sick with requiring more of them to look for jobs.
Stride said: “Many of our claimants have complex health conditions, and this trial will explore whether they could benefit from support from medical professionals with specialist knowledge.”
Although the pilot schemes will not offer claimants a full course of treatment run by the benefits system, they will inform broader changes designed to make the welfare system take control of both clinical treatment and job coaching to encourage more people back to employment.
Stride said he wanted to continue “improving the benefits experience for claimants and providing opportunities for them to benefit from work where appropriate, putting the emphasis on what they can do rather than what they can’t”.
The Treasury is eyeing the £260 billion welfare budget as it looks for savings to fund tax cuts. Ministers are most concerned about the £26 billion spent on disability benefits, a figure that has risen by two thirds in a decade and is projected to rise billions further.
This month Stride set out changes that will require hundreds of thousands of people with mobility and mental health problems to look for work they can do from home or see their benefits cut. Wider reforms that would allow people to keep claiming sick pay while they move into jobs have been delayed until after the election next year because officials want more time to flesh out the details.
Tax breaks given to staff and businesses for checkups and treatments to keep people in work are also being looked at, along with life coaches to guide those with health, housing and debt problems through the process of finding a job.
Stride has previously said that the NHS is not doing enough once people are signed off sick and should “step in and support that person and get them, keep them, back in work or close to the labour market. That’s not happening quickly enough.”
Earlier this year he said that “very busy” GPs spend an average of seven minutes with a patient who is signed off sick, and that he wanted a system in which doctors could offer people more help with getting back to work.
