Review to Urge Fast-Track Benefits for Severely Disabled Young People
Alan Milburn’s youth-employment review, due next month, will recommend that 16 to 24-year-olds with the most severe lifelong needs receive swift, unconditional support rather than repeated assessments. It could cover profound and multiple learning disabilities, severe neurological conditions and those on NHS continuing healthcare. “Too often they’re having to battle through dehumanising tick-box assessments designed to catch people out, not care for them,” Mr Milburn said. Nearly a million people aged 16 to 24 are not in education, employment or training.
This lands three weeks before a Budget in which welfare is one of the few places a chancellor short of headroom can look, and it points in the opposite direction to savings — towards spending less effort on assessment and more on support. The precedent is already set: the Timms review found the personal independence payment process “soul-destroying” and not fit for purpose. Mr Milburn’s argument is about sequencing rather than generosity — “by right they should get faster support rather than having to prove it over and over again” — which is cheaper administratively and harder to attack politically. The caution came from the charity Sense, whose Harriet Edwards warned: “we must not write young disabled people off.” Watch whether the Budget pre-empts the review or waits for it.