Age, health and other factors associated with return to work for those engaging with a welfare-to-work initiative: a cohort study of administrative data from the UK's Work Programme

Judith Brown; Srinivasa Vittal Katikireddi; Alastair H Leyland; Ronald W McQuaid; John Frank; Ewan B Macdonald

doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2018-024938

Age, health and other factors associated with return to work for those engaging with a welfare-to-work initiative: a cohort study of administrative data from the UK's Work Programme

BMJ Open. 2018 Oct 27;8(10):e024938. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2018-024938.

Authors

Judith Brown¹, Srinivasa Vittal Katikireddi², Alastair H Leyland², Ronald W McQuaid³, John Frank⁴, Ewan B Macdonald¹

Affiliations

¹ Healthy Working Lives Group, Institute of Health and Wellbeing, College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK.
² MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, Institute of Health and Wellbeing, College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK.
³ Management, Work and Organisation, University of Stirling, Stirling, UK.
⁴ Usher Institute of Population Health Sciences and Informatics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.

Abstract

Objectives: To investigate the role of individual factors (including age, health and personal circumstances) and external factors associated with clients having a job start while engaging with the Work Programme and variations by benefit type.

Setting: The UK Government's main return to work initiative (The Work Programme) in Scotland.

Design: Piecewise Poisson regression to calculate incident rate ratios using administrative data from 2013 to 2016 to identify factors associated with job start.

Participants: 4322 Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) clients not in work due to poor health and 8996 Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA) clients, aged 18-64 years, referred to the Work Programme between April 2013 and July 2014.

Main outcome measures: Starting a job and the time to first job start after entering the Work Programme.

Results: JSA clients (62%) were more likely to return to work (RTW) than ESA clients (20%). There is a strong negative relationship between age and the predicted probability of having a job start during the 2-year engagement with the programme for both JSA and ESA clients. JSA clients were most likely to RTW in the first 3 months, while for ESA clients the predicted probability of having a first job start was fairly constant over the 2 years. Health, including the number of health conditions, length of unemployment, client perception of job start and other individual factors were associated with job starts for both groups.

Conclusions: Age plays an important role in influencing RTW; however, important potentially modifiable factors include the length of unemployment, the management of multimorbidity and the individual's perception of the likelihood of job start. Future welfare-to-work programmes may be improved by providing age-specific interventions which focus on health and biopsychosocial factors to enable more people to realise the potential health benefits of RTW.

Keywords: ageing; health; return to work; unemployment; vocational rehabilitation.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adolescent
Adult
Age Factors
Attitude*
Female
Humans
Longitudinal Studies
Male
Middle Aged
Regression Analysis
Return to Work / psychology*
Scotland
Unemployment / psychology*
United Kingdom
Young Adult

Abstract

Publication types

MeSH terms

Grants and funding