GPs told to stop handing out sick notes and start sending people to job coaches and gyms
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/health/gps-stop-sick-notes-job-coaches/
Posted by tylerthe-theatre
GPs told to stop handing out sick notes and start sending people to job coaches and gyms
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/health/gps-stop-sick-notes-job-coaches/
Posted by tylerthe-theatre
31 Comments
“Surgeries will have dedicated teams to help people find a job.
Family doctors will collaborate with employment coaches who can assist patients with writing CVs and cover letters.
Social prescribing workers will be able patients to support including gym memberships and gardening classes.”
Why are doctors having to do this.
Why isn’t this the job of the literal government agency we have who’s roll is to get people into work. Why are they foisting more shit onto other departments to over load them? This is the same shit they did with teachers. They became truancy officers, ESL professionals, SENCO and social workers over the span of 10 years instead of being teachers.
So they’re forcing sick people into work. I don’t think that will work very well, as I’m sure that GPs are signing people off for a reason. I guess the government believes that work sets you free?
It is far too easy to get signed off.
Throughout my life I’ve had issues with anxiety that resulted in me going to the doctors. I just wanted a bit of support but on each occasion they have always invited to sign me off.
I never took up their offer, but it would have been super easy.
We have a culture of learned helplessness in the UK, and it manifests at every level. Systems that were designed as a safety net increasingly support people their whole lives.
Is this for people who are unemployed and sick? Because I already have a job thanks, if I should need to be signed off for a bit I will react very strongly to the suggestion of a job coach.
Broken arm mate? A month of weightlifting will sort that out
Aren’t fit notes given to the short term sick? Why are we making their lives harder? The long-term sick get a Work Capability Assessment and if found unfit for work don’t need to provide fit notes to get LCWRA.
Oh I’m glad the job market picked up so much in the last 24hrs that we are now desperate for workers again
Are they gunna pay for the gym membership? Chances are people who are jobless and sick can’t afford it.
Sending mentally ill people to work, genius! Let’s see how business insurance deals with that.
These schemes already exist. Re-siting them at a GP is going to make no difference whatsoever.
I’ve been very ill for a long time but I’m now well enough to get some sort of part time work from home, however I’m having difficulties finding something because I have no work references and no recent work history, and I’m not reliably well. I can be ill for a few weeks and unable to work again. I also have no particular skills – I was in low-paid retail and temp admin jobs before I got sick, and to be honest, I wasn’t especially talented at either. I was just reliable and I’ve lost that, now.
So I tried talking to a National Careers Service adviser.
He offered help with my CV – great, but if I can’t find an employer who’ll take someone on with no references and an 11 year work history gap and no explanation for it other than ‘er, I was very ill but now I’m better, honest, please employ me’ then even the brightest, shiniest CV is going to get me nowhere.
He suggested that I offered to work for nothing for a few weeks so that an employer can try me out, as it were, in order to overcome the lack of references. For some reason I think that this would lead to me getting exploited.
He suggested that I do a government-sponsored course. These courses are about GCSE level and so would probably be very helpful to someone who’s finding that their lack of GCSEs is causing them difficulties, or someone who would benefit from a care-giver qualification. I’m simply not well enough to care for anyone and I’ve got a reasonable number of certificates, so adding one or two more won’t make a difference to me. The courses do not lead to guaranteed jobs. Doing one of these courses would count as a successful outcome for the National Careers Service, however it would not be a successful outcome for me.
These courses also look like they should be decorated with red flags. There’s no fee, but the fine print – if you can find it – says that failing to complete a course will lead to a fee, unless you have a reasonable reason for not doing it. Finding out what that fee is was difficult. It was between £80 and £125 ish, I think. Finding out who decides whether your reason is reasonable or not was impossible. And the website was full of ‘don’t delay, sign up now to avoid missing out’ pushes. There’s no entry requirements, so someone who struggled at school because they are struggling to read and write would still be accepted… and then have to pay the surprise withdrawal fee, which is quite a lot of money if you’re broke.
That’s it. That’s all the help that’s available. It’s based on guesswork about who needs to use the service, characterising ‘the unemployed’ as lacking in paper-qualifications and needing a well-written CV, but otherwise capable, and effectively blaming them for their lack of employment. Unless the help available in the GPs office is substantially improved, which I don’t think is likely, then this new scheme is just another way to let smug people say ‘well, help is available’.
Ooh I can’t wait for the doctor to misdiagnose my partners chronic pain as needing to go to the gym
I can see why they’re doing it, but it doesn’t seem like the best way of doing because it comes across as punitive. There’s a massive onus currently on moving to a preventative model of health, from the NHS 10 plan, a lot of this is about the preventative issues in healthcare which cause people to have worse health and of which low income is one of the key ones (the Dahlgren and Whitehead model I believe it is one of the 4 umbrella terms). So I guess the logic is by helping someone find work it stops them disengaging with society (which can contribute to MH issues) and it raises socioeconomic status which theoretically helps improve their ongoing health.
But like I said, this doesn’t seem the best way to do it, but it also seems to be a pilot.
They used to do this and the previous government stopped it. “Exercise on prescription”
“Medically what you need is some rest, but politically I’m not allowed to do that anymore”
First do no harm??
As someone who was broken by a number of circumstances two years ago after a lifetime of work (and living off a pension which won’t last forever), I’d welcome some support. Support has been minimal in nearly 30 months out of work. If they signpost people to good quality coaches then great, but if they’re as frankly poor as the job centre was then no thanks. I’ve worked at a high level in IT and I have plenty to offer, but if all they do is offer unsuitable cookie-cutter work then I’ll reject it.
Nothing wrong with this other than it could be a waste of GP time, which could means there’s a knock on impact for other patients, really this needs to be sample tested in both high & low population practices.
Jeeze… My GP has signed me off work, and I’m under the home treatment team, due to burnout from LIFE!
I don’t get any benefits, so… what am I gonna do? Go to the gym? With what money? I find it incredibly distressing leaving the house on a good day.
Yeah I still went to work, but I was running on empty a lot of the time in a physically demanding job.
So… what’s someone like me to do?
May as well make all GPS take redundancy and turn the practices into Job Centres.
Only to then realise Job Centres don’t actually help you look for work either.
Our country is a fucking joke.
A lot of people’s problem is actually landing a job. Most people who are actively job hunting will make hundreads of application and not get anything.
The job market is a mess. Even in my own company I had all of my devs apply for the jobs we were advertising. Around 70% of my devs were all rejected by the recruitment agencies AI that screened all of the application.
So this idea that helping some create a CV will make them get a job is a joke. I am willing to bet if these people were told “hey these jobs need people, pick one to start on Monday” that would be 100x more effective then wasting time and money like this.
Whys it’s always the top 1% commentors on these threads that are moaning like fuck about anything and everything
Why is this the responsibility of a GP? Not every problem needs to be medicalised. Primary care is under enough pressure without having to deal with everyone’s social and financial problems.
Hello? Yeah, hi. I have a 39C fever, diarrhoea and a chest infection, could I have a sick note please, for work? GP: What you need is to go to the gym and get a second job… Next!
You DO realise that they will need to see their GP for this, and if mine is anything to go by I’m more likely to see a unicorn,so might not work as well as you’re expecting.
Is this just a very ungenerously phrased headline? GPs should have a wider set of tools available to help with mental health. At the moment it’s SSRI and waiting list for therapy.
You get the therapy and they basically just say go do these things anyway. If there’s programs in place that they can actually refer you to instead of feeling like you’re on your own then that’s good.
Job coaches are the biggest waste of space and money on the planet. At least they were 10 years ago when I was unemployed
So are they saying the GPS aren’t qualified to know when someone’s sick..all those years at school to be told you don’t know what your doing
This crap will appeal to the bitter but ethically this is criminal. It’s different if they genuinely need help with gym or coaching but suddenly saying people don’t need to be on sick doesn’t mean it’s true.
All those seething about some bloke they know who’s never worked all his life, gets a Lamborghini free, goes on holiday seventeen times a year and has the latest mobile phone need to chill tf out. Only 2% of all on benefit get 25k from benefit alone. You aren’t a genius, you aren’t aware of everything that goes on behind closed doors, you assume because x person acts normal in front of you so they don’t get judged.
Hello thanks I’m sure that will magically fix chronic fatigue syndrome thanks boss!!!
Putting your fingers in your ears and forcing ill people to work, instead of addressing why they’re ill or why they’re struggling to hold down a job (because believe me most WANT to work), is surely going to work this time!
I’m sick of this country putting all its focus and budget into scraping people off the floor instead of catching them when they fall (or even stopping them from climbing the building in the first place). We take all funding away from youth services, create an impossible job market, make it impossible to own a home, and then wonder why so many people are ill, disaffected, causing crime etc.
Prevention is always better than cure.
This will drive more people to suicide, which i suspect is exactly what the government wants.
Oh great – directly lose my job due to Government actions, and now I’m about to sign on they’ll take that out from under me to.
Never thought I’d have gotten so fucked over by a Labour government