People on sick leave will be helped back into work more quickly under a pilot scheme kick-started by Care Services Minister Phil Hope and Work and Pensions Minister Lord McKenzie today.

The 'Fit for Work' Service Programme of Piloting, backed by £13million, will test out how sickness absentees can be helped to recover and supported to get back to work more quickly than would otherwise be the case. They will test a range of different ways of providing support, to identify what works best.

Each pilot will test personalised, back to work support for people off sick. The range of services within a pilot should go beyond just healthcare and join up local services, including:

• Skills advice
• Employment advice
  
• Health and wellbeing services with a particular focus on vocational rehabilitation
  
• Wider social support such as debt or housing advice
• Conciliation to overcome escalated disputes between employees and employers

The Department of Health and the Department for Work and Pensions are jointly calling for organisations to come forward to participate in the pilot process from today. The pilots are expected to begin later this year.

Phil Hope said:

"Good health for the workforce is good for business - every employer knows that. In the current economic climate it's even more important that we cut the £100 billion cost of worklessness caused by ill health."

"These pilots will help us test different ways of helping people back to work, so we can see what really works. I want local authorities, PCTs and other providers to put their innovative ideas behind these pilots, which can only have social and economic benefits for their areas."

Lord McKenzie said:

"Now more than ever it's important to help people who are sick to stay in work so that they can support themselves and their families."

"These Fit for Work pilots will help do just that. Everyone has the right to work and we want to design a fair system which supports people so they can work when they are able."

The Fit for Work programme of pilots is part of a package of measures announced by the Government in response to Dame Carol Black's review of Britain's working age population. Also included were 'fit notes', a national centre for working age health and wellbeing and health, work and wellbeing co-ordinators. The Government is also increasing funding for Access to Work, a programme which helps disabled people gain and stay in employment.

Introducing integrated Fit for Work services is also part of the commitment set out in Lord Darzi's report "High Quality Care for All", to provide more support to help people stay healthy at work and help those struggling with ill health to return to work faster.

A workshop for parties interested in applying to become part of the Fit for Work programme will be held on March 16th 2009 in Edinburgh.

To find out more information, potential bidders should go to: http://www.workingforhealth.gov.uk/Fit-for-Work

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has announced that it is to work with the Government to assess how the recession is affecting disadvantaged groups like ethnic minorities, women, and older and disabled people.

Working with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), the Commission will also look at what policies the Government could put in place if evidence shows that these groups are disproportionately affected by the downturn, and how to properly target help to take advantage of a post-recession recovery.

An EHRC spokesperson for the Commission said: “We know that fairness is a key value we all share, in good times and tough times. This recession has had a terrible impact for hundreds of thousands of people who have lost their job or are under threat: men and women, the old and young, white, black or Asian, students struggling to find a job and disabled people.

We want to understand the patterns that are already starting to emerge. Are women more at risk than men? Are older workers more at risk than younger? Are disabled people more at risk than others? Are people in poorer parts of Britain more at risk than the wealthy?  And, if they are, why and what can we do about it?

By developing a clear understanding of what is happening on the ground we can make a difference this time round. For example, if the Commission knows that some people are being disadvantaged in a particular sector, we can work with those employers to make sure they think about retaining talent through flexible approaches like reduced hours and that they follow redundancy processes that are fair to all their employees. Our guide on managing through the downturn, published in January, can also help.

Looking to better economic weather, the data should also inform the Government's approach to recovery because it will give a clearer picture of where training and support should be targeted to get Britain prospering again.”

The Department for Work and Pensions has reportedly put bids for Flexible New Deal on “a short pause”. The Department was due this week to announce the preferred bidders for multi-million-pound contracts to run the scheme.

James Purnell, the work and pensions secretary, has publicly accepted that the terms of the contracts with will need to change as a result of the current economic climate. The original terms aimed to pay contractors by their results, actually getting the long-term jobless back into sustained work, rather than for simply delivering activities to improve their chances of finding a job. However, projections of the number of people out of work for more than 12 months suggest that the figure could be three times higher this year than assumed last summer when DWP invited bids from contractors to run the programme.

The Observer reported on Sunday that bidders now wanted higher payments up front before entering into contracts. Some bidders argued that contracts will not be viable if 80 per cent of their payment depends on actually getting people into jobs at a time of rising unemployment and falling vacancies.

There has also been some debate as to whether the entire contracting process will need to start over again. The Employment Related Services Association, which represents private and voluntary providers, said, in a letter to the department on Friday, the labour market context was now “so different” that the department would “no doubt” have considered whether procurement law required the competition to “restart from the beginning”.

However, the Financial Times reports that ERSA are denying the implication that providers want the whole contracting process to start all over again, instead saying that “existing, unprofitable, contracts for the unemployed, and people with disabilities, might also need to be changed ‘to reflect the prevailing economic climate’”.

Commenting in Third Sector, Catherine A'Bear, chief officer for corporate affairs at the Shaw Trust, urged the DWP to press ahead and make any amendments to contracts at a later date.
 
"We believe that the DWP should continue with the process of identifying prime contractors for Flexible New Deal using the tenders it has received," she said.
 
"The Shaw Trust is concerned that whilst key programmes like this are ‘paused', real people will be waiting longer for the right type of support they need."