Dr. Mel Cousins:

The short answer is that we are not engaging sufficiently. We are doing very little in terms of engaging with people in that critical period. There are lots of examples in other European countries as to what can be done. I do not have time to go into the details. There are many experiences from other European countries that could help stop people moving to long-term disability benefit. There is also the issue of people who have acquired early disabilities transferring from domiciliary care allowance to disability allowance. Again, that is an area where we are not really engaging with people to see what capacity they have, what type of work they might be able to do and how we could support them. We really need to engage much more.