The Access To Work Cap Is Hurting Deaf People In the Workplace

From the 1st of April 2018, Access to Work (AtW) will be capping its annual awards at £57,200 a year, which is 2 times the average national salary. Deaf employees will be forced to ask their employers to pay for communication support above this cap, leaving many terrified for their current jobs and financial futures.

Access to Work (AtW) is a government programme providing grants to make work accessible to disabled people and those with physical and health conditions.

Since 2015, new applicants have had the money they collect each year capped at 1.5 times the average salary. For example, deaf people in the workplace will only receive enough to cover the cost of a professional sign language interpreter for about 3 days a week.

From the 1st of April 2018, those who received an AtW award before 1 October 2015, and not changed their awards since, will also be capped.

** UPDATE (March 2018): The cap has now been raised to £57,200, 2 times the average salary.

These restrictions were introduced by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to aid in expanding the scheme to reach more people.

Everyone should be able to go as far as their talents can take them, but for too long disabled people and people with health conditions have been held back from getting on in work.

said Secretary David Gauke when talking about their ambitious 10-year strategy to “end injustice once and for all”.

However, as a result of these lofty goals deaf and disabled people are having to settle for part-time work or seek employment elsewhere, because they’ll only be able to take their talents and aspirations as far as the Access to Work cap will allow. Effectively placing a glass ceiling on our career ambitions.

Even though the DWP has said they will work closely with deaf Access to Work users, they have obviously missed their mark. With proposed solutions like inviting deaf employees to take advantage of a personal budget so we can “learn to manage” the support we’ve been provided.

At the thought of my deaf friends and customers having to cut back their work hours, I am reminded of Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist: “Please sir I want some more”.

Of course, we want the AtW scheme to help as many disabled people as possible, but by stretching the financing, more people are receiving less.

Although employers have a duty to make reasonable adjustments in the workplace for people with hearing loss, as is made clear in the Equality Act 2010, the majority of employers don’t have the spare money to take on and support deaf staff efficiently.

As Geraldine O’Halloran, co-founder of StopChanges2AtW so eloquently put it:

The idea put forward by the government that employers will pay for the support that deaf and disabled people need in order to do their jobs on an equal basis with non-disabled people is nonsense.

StopChanges2AtW is a campaign led by deaf and disabled professionals and British Sign Language interpreters against the negative consequences of changes and cuts to the Access to Work scheme.

Consequences include:

The restrictions and complexity to claim support from AtW are resulting in deaf and disabled people only being able to work part-time, turn down work and even lose their jobs. Some are discouraged from even applying for AtW support. All of this is contributing to us deafies in the UK becoming demotivated and feeling even more isolated in a hearing world.

In my last job I worked as a careers consultant. I had meetings every day with clients and colleagues, and as I couldn’t hear at all (I’m totally deaf) I really needed communication support to be provided. Access to Work suddenly stopped paying my support invoices and didn’t explain why. It took 7 months to get them to pay invoices again – they did this to me not once, but twice. That was 14 months of mega stress, watching the invoices balance grow larger with no promise of being paid, dealing with my manager asking me every day “Have Access to Work sorted this out yet, when are they going to pay the invoices?”, constantly having to explain my disability to my Access to Work adviser and why I needed captioning support – all this whilst trying to do my job like everyone else. It was frankly horrendous and I can understand why some deaf people don’t want to ask Access to Work for support, it’s just so much stress, it’s demotivating, demeaning and debilitating. The advisers get no training because, in their words, “there are too many disabilities out there” – they look for the cheapest service which they think might meet your needs, such as a telephone with a flashing light for the ringer (for a deaf person – me!).

The system is broken. It can work well for some people but I find you have to ‘get lucky’ with an adviser who understands and listens to your needs, and not have any sudden system / person sporks throwing a spanner in the works with support coming to a screeching halt and then taking months to get it back up and running again. And all this stress is before the Access to Work cap is even taken into consideration and you’re forced to really think hard about how to meet your communication support needs creatively so that you can do your job effectively!

I’m a certified careers consultant so in theory I can work as one again, anywhere I choose. But here’s the rub. Because of the Access to Work cap, I wouldn’t be able to, because the communication support to enable me to do my job effectively will cost more than the cap.

You might be a hearing person reading this article or a retired deaf employee wondering why you should care that these caps are preventing deaf people from receiving equal access in the workplace.

Well, below are some real people sharing their stories on how they’ve been affected by the Access to Work cap.

For me, Access to Work has been amazing. I have even been provided support at some meetings and also on Skype for weekly cross-UK meetings. I hope it isn’t changing. I can’t do without it now! – Niamh

They are so much stricter with their allowance now. I needed two types of communication support and a Roger Pen. Got one type of support and the Roger Pen. They said they couldn’t justify any more than that and gave me a tiny budget for 4 months. I have already had to ask for an extra 1k on top of that. – From a deaf employee in Northern Ireland.

Access to Work was totally useless the last time around. I needed a blue tooth loop for work, but because the company was of a certain size, it was decided that my boss should pay, putting me at a further disadvantage. This makes employing people with a disability look undesirable. My Boss should not have to pay. In the end, I had to fund it myself just so I can do my job. – Richard

Great, what are we supposed to do if we rely on interpreters or captioning? Are we just supposed to not work, or do basic menial jobs with no security, and then be palmed off to ESA / PIP hell? – Natalie

We are real people with real problems. We need your support to fight this injustice.

Join the campaign: Stop Changes to Access to Work