"Where your mental health just disappears overnight": Disabled people's experiences of the Employment and Support Allowance Work Related Activity Group

• There is evidence from all participants in this study that engagement with the ESA WRAG has had significantly detrimental effects on their mental health. • Participants expressed a desire to engage in work related activity and many found meaning in vocational activity, however this was different from what was expected from them as part of their engagement in the WRAG where less meaningful tasks were prioritised. • Rather than incentivising work-related activity as Conditionality intends to do, there is evidence that participants were driven by a range of perverse and punitive incentives whereby they were asked to engage in activity that undermined their self-confidence and required them to understate their previous achievements. • The impact of Sanctions was life threatening for some participants. The underlying fear instilled by the threat of Sanctions meant that many participants described living in a state of constant anxiety. This state of chronic fear is unlikely to enable people to engage in work related activity and so is an ineffective psychological intervention. This was exacerbated by the unpredictable way that Conditionality was applied, leaving some participants unsure how to avoid Sanctions. • The incentives designed to encourage people to engage in work related activity are based on psychological theory from the field of Behavioural Economics. On the basis of this study we conclude that these models of behaviour change are not applicable for Disabled people accessing benefits. The incentives offered by Conditionality and Sanctioning involve threats of removing people’s ability to access basic resources. This induces a state of anticipatory fear that negatively impacts on their mental health and renders them less able to engage in work related activity. • We would recommend that the use of Conditionality and Sanctioning is stopped as incentives to enable Disabled people to engage in work related activity. They are ineffective and instead offer a range of perverse and punitive incentives that are detrimental to health. • We would encourage more active engagement with Disabled People’s Organisations to develop alternative ways of engaging Disabled people in work related activity.