Are life coaches and fitness classes, aiming to get those on long-term sick leave back to work, coercive or liberating?
We had a range of responses internally to this story from The Times. It announced the UK government’s new “WorkWell” programme, which aims to reduce numbers of those on long-term sick leave from work—by offering them life coaching, fitness classes, gardening and other self-developing practices. The Times reports:
Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary, has expressed frustration that the NHS is not doing enough to deal with record levels of sickness absence and wants his department to be involved in treatment plans.
Reforms making it easier for doctors to refer people to occupational health schemes will be tested to reduce the number that GPs sign off people from work.
In an article for The Times, Stride and Victoria Atkins, the health secretary, say the government “is on a mission to get people back to work” as they set out plans to scale up occupational health services.
A record 2.6 million people are off work because of long-term sickness, adding billions of pounds to the welfare bill. The cost of disability benefits is projected to rise by 75 per cent to £93 billion a year by the end of the decade.
Rishi Sunak has pledged to tackle the “national scandal” of the growing numbers of those too ill to work, with reforms designed to force more people to look for work and a “Universal Support” service offering intensive personal coaching to help people get jobs.
Key elements of the plan, however, will not take effect until 2025. Since Sunak became prime minister the number of people on benefits with no requirement to look for work has increased by about half a million.
There are now 2.2 million people claiming universal credit with no work requirements, representing 36 per cent of total claimants, up from 24 per cent four years ago.
In an effort to reverse these trends, 15 areas will be selected in the new year to test a service known as WorkWell, which Stride and Atkins say will “provide integrated health and job support tailored to individual needs”.
There are two ways to regard this, from our perspective, which is consistently interested in emotional literacy and personal development as a driving resource for wider structural change.
One is that it’s pretty consistent with the late-capitalist/neo-liberal agenda of “responsibilising” people - that is, helping them to accept that impediments to change or betterment of their conditions lies in their private hands, rather than wider systemic forces. Harnessing a range of “wellness” self-help and self-development tools to achieve this end is pernicious - and may indeed deepen feeling of despair and inadequacy.
The other is that going through these experiences of self-mastery and self-possession will inevitably surpass/exceed any instrumental or functional ambitions politicians might have (to reduce welfare dependency, for example). Instilling a sense of purpose and potential for individuals, restoring their states from exhausted to energetic, will increase their agency in directions not easily captured by the current demands of the labour market.
What do you think? Your thoughts are welcome below.