Written question WQ84777

Occupational Health (OH) services are part of a broader landscape of medical treatment and welfare support, which help individuals manage a range of conditions, including long-COVID. There are no plans to develop specific OH return to work support service for people with long-COVID in Wales.

Employers are responsible for the putting in place procedures when an employee is ready to return to work following a period of absence due to illness. By law the employer must make reasonable adjustments, if needed, to support an employee’s return. OH support is an important element of this.

I have provided funding to ensure services are available to support people with long COVID via the Adferiad Programme. All Health Boards in Wales have developed integrated, multi-professional recovery and rehabilitation service models for people with long COVID, including putting in place referral mechanisms to secondary care specialists and diagnostics for those who clinically need it. Access into this integrated and multi-professional model is through GP services.

When supporting individual employees, I would anticipate OH services working in partnership with GPs and NHS services to ensure employees are supported holistically. This is the kind of collaborative support that will achieve the best outcomes for all people with health and welfare needs who are returning to work.

Our In-Work Support Service provides rapid access to occupational support to people with mental and physical health conditions. The service plays a vital role in helping people to retain employment by aiming to prevent people from becoming absent from work due to a mental or physical health condition and to help those on a sickness absence to return to work more quickly.

We will continue to invest in programmes to help keep people in work recovering from both mental and physical health conditions.