1st March 2007

A new national network of rehabilitation services, to enable people to remain in work or to quickly return following an accident or ill health, is launched in the UK today.

The Return to Work programme has been designed by Remploy, the country’s leading provider of employment services for disabled people, to support people with common health problems, including stress, depression, anxiety and back problems.

More than 3,000 people register for incapacity benefit each week and research by the Department for Work and Pensions shows that vocational rehabilitation is only available to 10 per cent of those who could benefit from it.

The new service is underpinned by Remploy’s already impressive history of recruiting and retaining people with health conditions and disabilities into mainstream employment and demonstrates the company’s continuing commitment to provide ethical, commercially-driven solutions for supporting disabled people in work.

“The aim is to focus on what a person can do rather than provide diagnosis-led solutions,” said Mike Clarke, Remploy’s Return to Work manager.

“We know that the longer you are out of work, returning becomes much more difficult. If a person with a back problem is off work for more than six months, there is a good chance that they will not work again. Work should be viewed as part of the recovery and the rehabilitation process, in fact evidence illustrates that work is certainly good for our mental health,” Mr Clarke said.

Remploy Return to Work has been designed and developed in association with KMG Health Partners. KMG complements Remploy’s services by providing specialist assessments and interventions to meet the needs of more complex cases and by training Remploy’s national team of vocational rehabilitation consultants. Each individual is trained against the standards of practice that Gail Kovacs of KMG is developing in her position as Vice Chair of the UK Vocational Rehabilitation Association (VRA).

“This is an exciting new venture for both parties,” said Ms Kovacs, an internationally recognised expert in the field of vocational services. “Remploy Return to Work delivers a single source vocational rehabilitation service for UK employers and insurers.

“Relative to other countries, vocational rehabilitation is in its infancy in the UK and the Remploy programme is an innovative way of assisting people back into work. It recognises that common health problems are best lived with by the individual concentrating on work.”

KMG is also a key partner in the Remploy-led Healthy Minds at Work initiative in Wales – a project which recorded a 97 per cent return to work success rate using early intervention techniques to retain people with mental health issues in employment.

Research commissioned by Remploy shows that there is now a greater political will in government and among employers to embrace vocational rehabilitation because of growing employers’ liability (EL) insurance costs.

Seven million working days are lost through accidents at work and 80 per cent of payouts by insurance companies cover loss of actual and potential earnings. EL claims take, on average, three years to settle.

“Stress and mental health are becoming increasingly high on the workplace agenda,” concludes Mr Clarke. “Remploy Return to Work provides simple and straightforward solutions to managing mental health and other common health problems in the workplace.”

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