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Let’s answer your questions all about the access to work grant scheme, the governments secret disability support which I’m trying to tell the world about. I applied for the scheme in 2023 and the support it’s given me has made such an incredible difference to my life and is the only reason that this website exists. I’ll be answering questions from my own experiences as a self-employed content creator and entertainer but I hope that you can take what I’ve learned and apply it to your own job role and situation. I now tell every disabled person I meet to apply and tell every business I speak to about it so they can support disabled employees better. If you want to hear more about the experience of someone who is in an employed role you can watch a youtube video I made with my friend Bailey Smith where we compare the difference in access to work as someone who is employed vs self-employed. I’ve had an incredible experience with Access to work so far and when it works it’s an incredible system, unfortunately it seems to be a bit of a postcode lottery as to how successfully it runs and the wait times for support has increased since I applied so definitely don’t put off applying like I did. Let’s get into the Q&A!
What is access to work?
Access to work is a government grant for those in England, Scotland and Wales to help you get or stay in work if you have a physical or mental health condition or disability.
Who can claim access to work?
Anyone with a physical or mental health condition or disability can claim from access to work if you need help to do your job or get to and from work. You need to be over 16 and be in paid work or about to start or return to paid work in the next 12 weeks and you need to live and work in England, Scotland or Wales. Northern Ireland doesn’t fall under access to work but does have a different separate system which is similar. The scheme covers a huge range of disabilities from physical disabilities such as being deaf or being a wheelchair user, like myself. It covers learning disabilities such as Down syndrome or neurodevelopmental conditions such as autism, ADHD, dyslexia etc. It can also cover mental health conditions such as depression anxiety and can cover long-term health conditions such as diabetes or epilepsy as long as you need support at work. It can even cover temporary disabilities like a broken leg. You don’t need a diagnosis to be able to apply for the scheme you just need to show evidence that you need support at work. It covers most types of work whether you’re self-employed, like me, or employed; whether you’re doing an apprenticeship, an internship, as long as it’s paid work. The only thing they don’t cover is voluntary work.
How much do you need to earn to be eligible for access to work?
So when I was applying in Summer 2023 I thought, and was told, that you had to earn somewhere between a minimum of £6000 and £7,000 a year, but looking at the website now there is no indication that you need to earn any minimum amount and it doesn’t matter what you earn you can still apply for access to work as long as you are in paid work for one or more hours a week which is great. You can also get access to work at the same time as most benefits and it doesn’t affect most benefits either, the only thing you might want to check what kind of support can you get if you’re in receipt of ESA
What kind of support can you get via access to work?
If like me you had a disability and went to University it’s very similar to disabled students allowance in terms of what you can get. But if you didn’t here’s a brief overview of all the things you can get because there’s so many different things that will apply to different disabilities! First of all, you can get physical equipment from things like wheelchairs to laptops. I got a very lovely pair of noise cancelling headphones which I love. You can get different types of software so I have software on my computer so I can do text to speech, speech to text and I have a piece of of planning software and the people that train you on using the software can give really good advice. You can get business coaching (mine was ADHD based), you can get BSL interpreters, you can get drivers or the cost of traveling if you can’t use public transport. For example I have a driver because I can’t um use public transport for some of my jobs cause I need a lot of equipment with me or it’s a long distance. You can get physical changes to your workplace. You can also get some basic mental health support which is really important. But the thing that’s made the biggest difference for me and my work is being able to employ support workers to help me do my work.
What is the process like and how long did it take?
Compared to all the other things I’ve applied for in the last 12 months access to work was definitely the easiest. You do an online application to start with, you can do it over the phone but I found the online application much easier, and there are 12 different sections but they’re very short and it’s basically just explaining what you need support with. Six of those sections are about the different things that you might need support with. I started the process August 2023 and I was assigned a case worker quite quickly and also got on to the separate but linked mental health support services quite quickly they’re not great at dealing with very complex mental health conditions but they are definitely there to support you to be a contact the whole all time and make sure that your mental health is going in the right direction at least. That is through Able Futures or Maximus so definitely get in contact with one of those straight away after applying and getting your case worker if you can. Then it wasn’t until December 2023 that I had my assessment. The access to work assessment is not like a scary benefits assessments that I’ve been through it is much more of a conversation and a chat, again very like disabled students allowance if you’d applied for that, where you kind of collaboratively come up with things that would be helpful for you. They have loads of great ideas and share those with you and you can obviously ask and put forward your case for the things that you might really really need. From my assessment we discovered that my need for a support worker was pretty big and my assessor suggested that I had matched hours so that my support worker would work the same amount of hours as I did. But for a support worker I then had to fill out a separate form after my assessment, it’s only a page and a half and it it’s not too difficult to fill out but you just have to explain what you do and what your support worker would be doing for you. They can only do things independently for 20% of the hours that you have assigned to you other than that they’ll need to be directly supporting you in exactly what you’re doing it. And because of this rule I ended up with 25 hours and 24 hours for my support worker due to what I had put down. The only tricky thing about the form especially if you are new to work or coming back from time off, like I was, was figuring out how many hours you are able to work, how much you will need your support workers and how long the kind of tasks you do will take you.
Overall, from applying in August 2023 I got mental health support in the September, I started getting my physical equipment and software in the January 2024 and then my support workers started in February. Unfortunately I believe the wait times have increased but it is worth the wait. A top tip from my friend Bailey if you’re employed is to apply as soon as you are offered a job because if you have a start date access to work will usually work quicker to try and get the support in place before you start whereas if you are already in a job they’ll assume you are able to do it in some capacity and can wait.
So many of the questions I got asked when I said I would be making this post were about my support workers so the next few questions will talk about support workers in more depth.
How did you find your support workers?
So there are agencies out there that can recommend and help you with support workers but I don’t know too much about those. A lot of people that I know that have support workers through Access to Work hire someone that they know and that they trust and I think that’s really important. A lot of my friends that get Access to Work actually employ their Partners as their support worker which is great for their household. So I found my first support worker, Leanne, because I worked with her at my entertainment company so she already knew all about that side of the job and that meant that she could pick things up really quickly and really easily but I ended up leaving that aspect of my work because it was such a struggle physically. Then I met Poppy because she was actually my cleaner (still is haha) and we got chatting and really hit it off so I asked her to help me with support work if she was interested and then found out that she happened to have experience in care and had a degree in special education so I hired beautifully without even realising. With Eboni I was friends with her mum who had told me all about Eboni’s studies in social media and such at Global academy so she came on to help me with editing in July. Beth was another friend from my princessing days who jumped in to cover in July and since graduating from university and becoming a jobbing performer she is still my cover star jumping in for holidays and sickness. I definitely recommend finding someone that you trust and you trust to see you in all different states because, if you’re like me and your health fluctuates you want someone who is there for you on your good days and is there for you even more on your bad days.
What is the role of a support worker and what do they do for you?
Because of the nature of my job my support workers kind of do anything and everything just like I do. They drive me to jobs, they carry things and set up things that I can’t do on my own, they assist me on shoots or when we’re going on location or to events, they help keep up with a lot of the admin that I struggle to do and keep on top of my diary. They also keep on top of things like keeping the office tidy so that I can actually film and editing videos and proofreading blogposts – so if there are any mistakes it’s their fault not mine 😛
How many hours or days a week do you get support ?
This is going to totally depend on your job, your disability, how many hours you work and how much support you need. I was recommended to have matched hours I actually get slightly less than matched hours so what we said on the forms and what has ended up happening is that I work 25 hours a week and I have support for 24 hours a week. I split those relatively evenly between my support workers but there’s no limit on the number of support workers you can have. So you could just have one or you can have six. I find it good to have 2 main ones with different skills/focus areas and at least one extra to be able to cover when needed.
Do support workers only support you with work rated tasks or can they help you with other things?
Support workers can only help you with work rated tasks through access to work so if you need much more help you might be needing to look into getting carers and personal assistants as opposed to support workers. But with the nature of my job, and potentially a lot of jobs, is that they need to help with some things that aren’t directly work rated i.e they remind me to eat and drink and take my medication that’s all part of the working day but not directly related to the work but it means that I can do my job better but if we take Poppy for an example she helps keep on top of the tidiness in the office as part of her role as my support worker but she still has a separate job as my cleaner that I pay her for separately off my own back.
If I’m working away or overseas can I still claim support worker hours?
Yes you can have support workers who work remotely so as long as you are working they can be working. If your support worker is coming with you on a trip you can still claim hours but you can’t claim for the whole time they’re there you can only claim for the hours they are working. For example, Poppy and I went to Naidex which is in Birmingham, and I live in Essex so she was paid for the drive from my house to a location where we stayed overnight but then didn’t get paid again till we started driving the the next day to Birmingham and then got paid for the whole day at Birmingham and the way back.
Is there much admin in managing your support workers employment?
So when you take on support workers as part of the process you have to get some quotes, send them to your case worker and then they come back to you and say you can pay your support workers X amount so there was a little bit of admin there with the initial setup. After that your support workers are employed on a self-employed basis so they manage their own taxes, invoices and time sheets and you don’t have to pay them holiday or sick leave or anything like that, just like any normal self-employed job so there’s none of that that you have to think about or manage. The only thing that I really have to manage is getting them paid every month so they’ll send their invoices to me then I have to go on to access to work (they have a paper claim form but I’ve not used that) I use the online claim form and input the information from the time sheet and invoices into the form so that they can get paid. The first time it takes a little bit longer because you have to set up all the specific payment details but after that the payment details are saved so that every month after that I don’t have to do a whole lot of admin. Its a case of inputting their hours, attaching their invoices, send it off and away you go. If you’re someone like me that struggles with admin you can get your support workers to help you with that as well.
Finally How do you overcome internalized ableism when you need support but don’t think you’re deserving of it?
I kept this question till last because I think it’s so important and I think it’s something that so many of us with disabilities think, that we’re not worthy of support. You are worthy of support so please just do it! I spent so long last year applying for things because I desperately needed the support and this was the last thing I applied for when it should have been the first because it was the most straight forward and the easiest to get my head around and it’s made the most difference to my life. Last year I was barely able to work at all and even in the six months that I’ve had the girls it’s made such a difference to my working life. So just stop listening to that little internalised ableist voice in your head, I know it can be loud, but you deserve this support and it will help you so so much. It’s the best thing I’ve done for a long time. You deserve it please apply.
If you have any further questions about Access to Work please don’t hesitate to get in touch and I’ll try and do my best to answer.
