Gareth Parry has spent almost three decades supporting people with disabilities and mental health issues find work, but a recent mental health crisis of his own has given him a personal insight into the remit of the organisation he leads.
Parry has only ever worked for Remploy, starting as a trainee administrator and becoming chief executive a year ago. Problems in his personal life two years ago triggered depression. At the time, he was overseeing a government contract for workplace mental health support. “I knew a lot [professionally] about mental ill health, but I didn’t recognise it,” he says. “Suddenly I was on the other side. It reinforced the importance of organisations like Remploy; work gave me routine, structure, focus, when everything else in my life was in chaos.”
Parry became chief executive in May 2016, several months after disclosing his condition (“all credit to the board”), which he manages with antidepressants, cognitive behaviour therapy-style self-help and maintaining a reasonable work-life balance. Living with depression, he says, “has made me a better person to run an organisation like Remploy”.
Remploy is a big provider of welfare-to-work services, running £50m worth of contracts for national and local government, and for a range of employers from retailers and supermarkets to construction firms and facilities management companies in Great Britain. About 95% of its contracts are with government or other public bodies and agencies, such as the Care Quality Commission, the BBC and GCHQ, and for local authorities. Its government contracts include providing mental health support to employees and people in work who are referred to Remploy or who self-refer through the access to work programme; disability employment support through the work choice scheme; and running part of the much-criticised work programme for the long-term unemployed. It helps disadvantaged people to start, keep or return to employment, supporting 130,000 people into work over the past decade.
These 130,000 are just a proportion of the total who have accessed Remploy in some way. Some are helped to keep jobs when going through mental health issues, or supported in less direct ways, through internships, walk-in advice in high street branches, applications for work or training, online access for help with CVs or letters, and phone support.
For the workplace mental health support scheme, of 7,000 people helped by Remploy over the past five years, 92% still had their jobs six months later. In addition, supported internships have helped people with learning disabilities. “For a good supported internship scheme, let’s say a cohort of 10 people, it’s reasonable that six of the 10 will end up in work,” Parry says. He adds: “There is a challenge around what happens about the four who did not get work, but the point is you’ve got six into work.”
According to government figures, in mid-2016 in the UK, 49% of disabled people aged 16–64 were in work, compared with 81% of non-disabled people. The disability employment gap – the difference between the employment rates of disabled and non-disabled people – therefore stood at 32 percentage points.
Of Remploy’s own staff of 750, just under one-third are disabled. So how can you get more disabled people into work when government policy and cuts seem to undermine that end? Parry fudges the question somewhat. “Regime and government administrations change and evolve and have different types of impact,” he says. “Our role is regardless of that to get disabled people who want to work, into work.”
What does he make of a damning report published by the Equality and Human Rights Commission on Monday, showing that progress towards real equality for disabled people over the past 20 years is insufficient and “littered with missed opportunities and failures”, including a lack of equal opportunities in education and employment?
“I realise that we still have a long way to go to achieve true equality of opportunity for disabled people in our communities,” he says.
“Achieving real social inclusion has to be the goal and while having structures and regulation in place to support and protect people with disabilities and health conditions is important, societal change is vital. We must recognise, harness and nurture people’s abilities rather than see only a disability. I am heartened by the attitude of employers large and small that we work with and among whom this recognition is evident and increasing. Genuinely putting ability first not only makes sense in working towards a more equal society, but it makes good business sense, which in turn will increase employment opportunities for disabled people.”
Remploy has changed a lot in its 72 years of existence. Launched by the postwar government in 1945 to employ disabled second world war veterans in sheltered factories producing everything from furniture to shoes, the last factories closed in 2013, as the government and many campaigners regarded mainstream employment as preferable to segregated or sheltered employment. While some welcomed the move, others felt the closures abandoned disadvantaged people.
In April 2015, Remploy was outsourced to a joint venture between US-born international outsourcing giant Maximus – which has come under fire as the provider of the Department for Work and Pensions’ controversial “fit for work” tests – and Remploy’s employees, who have a 30% stake in the business.
But Parry denies that being owned by Maximus undermines Remploy’s status as a champion of disabled people. “I can understand why people would see it that way, but we have a strong social conscience, the employee ownership keeps us focused on that, the profits don’t go overseas to America, they go back into the [Remploy] business.
“We have to be commercially successful and sustainable – so we want to make a profit because that will ensure we continue to exist for another 70 years and impact positively on the lives of disabled people,” he says.
While Remploy is financially secure – it declared £2m profits in 2015 – it is having to seek more business outside the public sector. “The business will reshape because our core market – welfare to work – is resizing and reshaping,” says Parry. This autumn sees the government’s work programme and work choice scheme replaced by a single work and health programme – Remploy may get the contract in Wales – but there are fears that such reforms decimate the welfare to work sector. Austerity, says Parry, “speeds up the need to diversify”. Hence Remploy does more “commercial work” like supported employment schemes with big retailers, although 95% of its business is still with the public sector.
Parry wants more supported internships for learning disabled people (the employment rate for learning disabled people is 5.8%). No longer state-owned, he says Remploy is not apolitical, but “constructively critical”: “We think government could do a lot more for supported internships for people with learning disabilities.” He wants young people with an education care and health plan (for additional support to those with special educational needs) to get “automatic entitlement” to supported internships.
For now, Parry wants to challenge the negative language used to describe people with higher support needs as “unemployable” or “hardest to help”. “The welfare-to-work market needs to develop a much more aspirational language … it’s not about lecturing people to get a job.” Raising aspirations, he says, is the responsibility of business leaders. Parry’s own experience of depression underlined to him the importance of senior staff advocating for and demystifying mental ill-health. “You get sports stars and personalities talking about it, but not many business leaders. There’s still a taboo we need to break.”
CV
Age: 50.
Lives: Leamington Spa, Warwickshire.
Family: Separated, three children (14, 12 and 10).
Education: Mosslands comprehensive, Wirral, Merseyside; University of Hertfordshire: social sciences degree.
Career: May 2016-present: chief executive, Remploy; 2013-May 2016: director of strategy, Remploy; 1988-2013: various roles at Remploy, including factory manager, HR manager, head of learning; 1988-90: administrator, Remploy
Public life: 2015-present: board member of Remploy’s employee ownership association.
Interests: Cycling, music and spending time with the children.
We must recognise, harness and nurture people’s abilities rather than see only a disability
Gareth Parry: ‘I knew a lot about mental health but I didn’t recognise it’
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