Opportunity for All:

Essays on transforming employment for disabled people and those with health conditions
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Fewer than half of disabled people work; disabled people are more than twice as likely to be out of work as their non-disabled peers; and when disabled people do work, they face a wage penalty of on average £1.50 an hour. These disadvantages persist even when other factors that could explain them are taken into account, and the UK falls well short of many other countries in its record on disability employment. Something must be done.

Together with national employment, learning and skills charity Shaw Trust, we have brought together the latest thinking from leading experts on one of the biggest challenges of our time.

The collection, Opportunity for All, provides perspectives from eleven leading thinkers in disability, health and employment. It aims to pick up where the recent government Green Paper, ‘Work, Health and Disability: Improving Lives’ left off and sets out fascinating ideas on what we need to do now.

Minister for disabled people, health and work Penny Mordaunt MP provided a foreword.

Authors include:

Liz Sayce – former chief executive, Disability Rights UK

Dame Carol Black – principal of Newnham College Cambridge, and
independent adviser to the government on work and health

Ben Baumberg Geiger – senior lecturer in sociology and social policy,
University of Kent

Kirsty McHugh – chief executive, Employment Related Services Association

Gemma Nicola Jamieson – digital marketing and content officer, Shaw Trust

Paulette Cohen – director, diversity and inclusion, Barclays

Christian Van Stolk and Joanna Hofman – vice president & research leader, RAND Europe

Andrew Parkins – PublicCo

Dave Simmonds OBE – senior emeritus research fellow, Learning and Work Institute

Rt Hon Frank Field MP – chair-elect, House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee

Gemma Hope – head of policy, research and communication, Shaw Trust