Details
- £60m Innovation Fund: The Pathways to Work Innovation Fund is open to private, voluntary and public sector organisations to develop new approaches to supporting disabled people and people with health conditions into and at work.
- Potential innovations: Proposals could include AI-powered job-matching tools, prosthetics, digital therapies for mental illness and new forms of employment support for people experiencing ill health.
- Application deadline: Organisations can submit applications until 26 October 2026.
- Business and local engagement: Almost 800 organisations participated in an initial agenda-setting event for the programme. Further events will take place across the country to engage local business leaders in supporting people into employment.
- Scale of economic inactivity: The fund forms part of wider Government action to support the 2.8m people currently out of work because of sickness into employment.
- Expert panel: An expert panel will help determine which bids receive funding, with disabled people’s experiences intended to inform funding decisions. The members of the panel can be found below:
- Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson – Paralympian and Member of the House of Lords
- Andrew Greenway – Founder, Public Digital
- Angela Matthews – Director, Business Disability Forum
- Giles Barker – Workplace Disability Lead, Channel 4
- Jon Sparkes – Chief Executive of Mencap
- Mark Esho – Entrepreneur, founder and co-owner of Easy Internet Services Ltd and Easy Internet Solutions
- Nabila Gardner – Director and Health and Wellbeing Coach of Ways of Wellbeing and member of the DWP Independent Disability Advisory Panel
- Adam Whitworth – Professor at University of Strathclyde
- Mark Hodgkinson – Chair, The Valuable 500 Foundation
- The Northern Ireland Executive and Welsh Government are putting forward additional advisers, who will be appointed and confirmed shortly.