Consultation outcome

Scope response

Updated 23 March 2020

1. Summary

Scope welcomes the opportunity to respond to the Social Security Advisory Committee’s consultation examining how the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) can involve disabled people. Scope believes in putting disabled people at the heart of everything we do as a charity.

We have focused our response on the learnings we have taken from our own experiences of working with disabled people and have recommended how DWP can involve disabled people and their families more closely in their policies and practices.

2. Question 12

Do you have any suggestions to develop the processes for you to be able to engage with DWP in the future?

2.1 Question 12 response

As a pan disability charity, Scope actively involves disabled people and people with lived experience of disability in the design, implementation and evaluation of our work.

To ensure all staff are following best practice, five engagement and participation principles have been developed which are used to shape any engagement work with disabled people:

• Recognising, valuing and acting on disabled people’s knowledge and expertise based on their lived experience.

• Promoting personalised approaches by working alongside disabled people with differing skills, experiences, support needs and backgrounds.

• Ensuring that everything we do adheres to our accessibility policy.

• Being open and honest with disabled people about any limits to what we can do (for example money, time or strategic fit), and if or how we will address these.

• Ensuring that disabled people have confidence in how they work in partnership with us to achieve Scope’s vision.

These were based on elements of the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE)’s co-production principles.

Scope recruits disabled people and parents of disabled children to take part in all types of research projects through an in-house research panel. The panel contains approximately 750 people based across the UK who have a wide range of impairments or lived experience of disability. Members of the panel are recruited through Scope’s communication channels, services and online marketing. They choose which projects they want to be involved in based on their experience, and when possible are given vouchers as a thank you for their time and opinions.

As of March 2020, members of the panel have taken part in over 200 projects. One of these is an evaluation of Scope’s Support to Work employment service.

As part of the evaluation, disabled people were recruited to an evaluation panel which studied how the scheme worked and recommended how it could be evaluated. Disabled people were also part of the core research team and helped conduct the evaluation of the scheme and shape the findings and recommendations made on how to improve the Support to Work service.

Feedback of the evaluation has found that involving disabled people revealed new ideas and interpretations, which added value to the recommendations which will be made on how to improve the service. Members of the evaluation panel also felt that working with other disabled people helped understand their strengths better.

“The diversity of lived experience of disability, backgrounds and age within our team has enabled a practical, rounded and robust approach to evaluating Support to Work. I’m delighted to be part of the project, as I believe that involving disabled people in planning, shaping and evaluating services aimed at them is absolutely crucial for effective delivery and successful outcomes”.

xxxxx xxxxxxx Support to Work Peer Reviewer

Members of the evaluation also found that having a flexible approach is important. One of the participants lived outside of London so found that communicating using conference calling software such as Skype gave him a far greater opportunity to contribute than if that option was not available. Ensuring that all documents were fully accessible was also seen as important by participants.

The decision by the government to place the UK under a lockdown as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak has meant that having a flexible and creative approach to engagement with disabled people is particularly important. At Scope we are looking at building on using remote means to build engagement even more so that disabled people can continue to play a vial role in what we do.

The insight gained from involving disabled people in the evaluation of the service has meant that the Support to Work Employment Lead has committed to taking forward the recommendations made by the evaluation panel.

Scope has found that co-producing with disabled people and adopting the principles recommended by the SCIE means that the charity better understands and is more responsive to the disabled people it serves. This in turn means that the work it does has a stronger and more focused impact.

In 2019, the National Audit Office reported that the DWP’s approach to the way it engaged with disabled people meant that there are “gaps in its understanding of how its jobcentres are providing services to disabled people” . Increasing the amount of co-production and evaluation work it does with disabled people will enable the DWP to better design and assess the success of its services.

In recent years, the DWP has experienced a loss of trust amongst disabled people. In a recent survey, only 18 per cent of disabled people thought that the DWP understood their personal situation and would help them find work. as well as help to build trust with disabled people . By involving disabled people more in the design and evaluation of the services which are used by disabled people, the DWP can start to improve the levels of trust disabled people have in services run by the department.

Scope recommends that the Department for Work and Pensions includes disabled people in the production, implementation and evaluation of all of its work that affects disabled people.

To ensure all staff members at the DWP are guided by best practice, Scope recommends that the DWP adopts the five engagement and participation principles set out by the SCIE.

Scope would also point to the work of disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) and their unique approach to good engagement. Many DPOs are located in their local communities, and have a deep understanding of how to reach and engage well with local disabled people.

For further information, please contact:
xxxxxx xxxx xxxx xxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxx xxx xxxxxxx
Email: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

3. About Scope

We’re Scope, the disability equality charity. We won’t stop until we achieve a society where all disabled people enjoy equality and fairness. At home. At school. At work. In our communities.

We’re a strong community of disabled and non-disabled people. We provide practical and emotional information and support when it’s needed most. We use our collective power to change attitudes and end injustice.

We campaign relentlessly to create a fairer society. And we won’t stop until we achieve a society where all disabled people enjoy equality and fairness.