Access to Work – Sharing experiences

Wednesday 28 June 2023
10:00 am to 11:00am
Zoom

Visionary’s Lived Experience Leaders Group and RNIB’s Employment Team have been working together to highlight experiences of Access to Work (ATW).  So far, we have produced a report, Access to Work delays | RNIB which was used to inform a recent RNIB approach to outline how lengthy delays to the UK Government’s Access to Work scheme are holding many people with sight loss back from entering the workplace or carrying out existing roles.

Working together, RNIB and Visionary are now looking for your help to gather more evidence which can be used to influence government and DWP. We are aware that there is a post code lottery for Visionary member organisations when it comes to ATW support. It would be useful to understand the lived experience of customers who are known to Visionary member organisations as to how they have been supported through ATW (positive and negative).

Initially we would like to focus on the lived experience evidence from VI organisations who are part of Visionary, but longer term, we want to open this out to the wider Employment sector to understand what is happening.  Establishing an evidence base of delays in the system will help us with pushing for urgent action with DWP, so it would be extremely beneficial to gather some key information from Visionary members who have people affected by ATW delays.

If you are interested in helping, please attend our information and action session:

• We will share progress we’ve made since the launch of the Access to Work campaign report.
• There will be a demonstration of our live webform which enables customers to provide feedback on their experience of Access to Work.
• Find out how your organisation can help to campaign for continuous improvement to the Access to Work programme.
• Share your thoughts on what else we should do to support your organisations to get involved.