Physios seek 'Fit for Work' pilot role

News | HSP
28.07.2008

The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) has welcomed the government's decision to pilot an NHS-based "Fit for Work" service and called for physiotherapy to have a central role in its development.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) confirmed in its Welfare Reform Green Paper, published last week, that it would pilot a Fit for Work service, as recommended by Dame Carol Black in her report on the health of the working-age population.

The service will bring together health and employment support to help those in the early stages of sickness absence return to work.

CSP chief executive Phil Gray said, "Physiotherapists are ideally placed to tackle workplace ill health and help keep people in work.

"By intervening early, and playing a key role in the treatment and prevention of health conditions that affect ability to work, physiotherapists can improve patient health and wellbeing and reduce benefit dependency.

"The CSP is therefore calling on government to make physiotherapy central to the development of this much-needed NHS-based Fit for Work service."

The DWP's consultation paper, No One Written Off: Reforming Welfare to Reward Responsibility, can be downloaded here.

Responses are required by 22 October.