The Government has launched Working our way to better mental health: a framework for action, the first ever national mental health and employment strategy.
The framework for action is designed to:
- Improve well-being at work for everyone, and
- Deliver significantly better employment results for people with mental health conditions, supporting them into work, helping them to stay in work and assisting them to return to work more quickly after sickness absences.
Dame Carol Black's review of the health of Britain's working age population estimated that the economy loses over £100 billion a year through ill-health and associated sickness absence and unemployment. Mental ill-health accounts for between £30 and £40 billion of this.
The strategy establishes a cross-government approach to tackling this cost and waste of talent.
Evidence shows that:
- More than one quarter of the population still think that people who have mental health conditions should not have the same rights to a job as anyone else.
- Many employers do not believe that they employ anyone who has a mental health condition.
- Fewer than four in ten employers have said that they would recruit someone who had a mental health condition.
Yet many people with mental health conditions are successful in their jobs. We must ensure that all people are allowed to reach their full potential and that no one misses out on the benefits that good work can bring.
Download a copy of the mental health and employment strategy - Working our way to better mental health: a framework for action.
The companion guide to Working our way to better mental health: a framework for action contains a summary of the strategy commitments and up-to-date links to relevant online resources.
Three other inter-related documents were released in conjunction with the strategy:
- Realising Ambitions: Better employment support for people with a mental health condition is a DWP-commissioned, independent review led by Rachel Perkins. It examines how we can strengthen employment, health and wider state support to help people with mental conditions on out of work benefits.
- Work, Recovery and Inclusion: Employment support for people in contact with secondary mental health services is a cross-government delivery plan for England to support people in contact with secondary mental health services into work. It forms part of the Government response to the Perkins Review mentioned above.
- New Horizons: A shared vision for mental health is a cross-government report produced by the Department of Health including commitments to action by 11 government departments. For the first time it sets out a new approach with the twin aims of improving people's quality of life and well-being, and improving the quality and accessibility of services for people with poor mental health.
- Cross-Government commitment to mental health and employment policy
This week 4 highly significant policy papers and 2 Government initiatives were launched. This Sainsbury Centre briefing is an introductory guide to the reports, how they relate to each other and the key messages for mental health and employment. It then asks what happens next.