Pathways to work

The Priory Group provide services for people on employment and support allowance (previously known as incapacity benefit) with mental health problems as part of the Pathways to Work programme.

Nearly 1 million people of the 2.9 million people in the UK on employment and support allowance have a mental health problem.

Pathways to Work is part of the Government's Welfare Reform agenda.  Linked to Jobcentre Plus, Pathways to Work aims to help one million people off employment and support allowance by 2015 and address child poverty.

Priory has won contracts with partner organisations Shaw Trust and Seetec to deliver a range of Pathways to Work services in Norfolk, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire and the Black Country.  Priory assesses people with long term mental health conditions to determine what support they need to gain and sustain employment, then delivers condition management programmes to provide the help required.  We also train the employment advisors and case management teams run by our partners Shaw Trust and Seetec, to help them understand the basics of mental illness and how to work with people with mental health problems.

Priory's Condition Management Programmes are focused around supporting people on employment and support allowance with anxiety, stress and depression. The programme equips people with the knowledge, coping skills and peer support to enable them to gain and sustain employment whilst living with their health condition.

Comments from those who have completed the course:

• "I've been on a lot of courses and this is one of the best ones. You know sort of health related. Not many are health related."
• "Without this course, nothing would have ever changed."
• "I am starting to look forward to returning to work for the first time."
• "I felt I wasn't unusual about having fears and anxieties about going back to work."
• "Informative, useful and enlightening - they should call it the lightbulb course, by the second week I felt as if there were hundreds of lightbulbs going off!"
• "Life changing."

More information can be found here:

Job Centre Plus

Direct Gov