Getting Support at Work with ADHD
The Access to Work scheme provides practical help if your ADHD makes it difficult to do your job. It’s run by the UK Government and can fund a variety of things to help you.
First off, it’s ok to get help.
If you or a loved one is struggling with ADHD, it’s completely normal and acceptable to seek out help and support. ADHD is a legitimate neurological condition that can significantly impact many areas of life. You don’t have to go through it alone.
What does Access to Work need from you?
You don’t need an official ADHD diagnosis to apply. The main requirements are:
- Being 16 or over
- Living in England, Scotland or Wales
- Having a paid job, being self-employed, or about to start work
What can Access to Work fund?
- Specialist equipment (noise-cancelling headphones, software to help you focus)
- Workplace adjustments (quiet spaces, flexible hours)
- A job coach or ADHD coach to help you manage your condition at work
Where to go from here?
You can keep reading more below, or choose one of the following sections to get going.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT THE ACCESS TO WORK SCHEME
Just to break it down again, here are some of the most common FAQs, but if you have a specific query, please just get in touch and we’ll help as best as we can!
To be eligible, you must:
- Have a disability or health condition that affects your ability to work
- Be 16 or over
- Live in England, Scotland or Wales
- Be in or about to start paid employment (including self-employment)
Access to Work can provide a wide range of support, including:
- Special equipment or adaptations to existing equipment
- Travel costs for work if you can’t use public transport
- A support worker or job coach
- Communication support at interviews (e.g. sign language interpreters)
- Disability awareness training for colleagues
You can apply online at gov.uk/access-to-work, by phone on 0800 121 7479, or by requesting a paper form. You’ll need to provide details about how your condition affects your work.
Yes, Access to Work grants are capped each year. For 2023/24 the cap is £66,000 per person per year.
No, the funding is a grant so it does not need to be repaid, as long as you meet the eligibility criteria.
f.a.q.
About “aDHD Access to Work”
– You’ve probably got questions about us too…
And that’s ok! ADHD people are suspicious and yet quite easily led at the same time. We’ve spent a lot of our life being told to go against our instincts, and it can be a bit of a muddle, so to clear up what we can here’s some info to help.
No. Not at all. The only association we have is that we’ve been where you are.
Hi, I’m Sam. I’m the one behind the majority of the website, and I’m a 40 something year old cisgendered LGBT woman who was late diagnosed with ADHD in 2022. I had a horrid time with work and trying to navigate what it all meant. I was recommended to contact the Access to Work Scheme and get some help, but I ended up with what felt like the bare minimum and without any true support for my employer at the time. No one explained how I needed to go through the scheme, and so I was left to my own devices. Since then I found out some of the grants other people had been given, and because it’s not a level playing field, I felt like there needed to be one place for all of us to be able to share resources and stop people getting overwhelmed with a process that is designed to help us, but was not built for us at all. A year after my original grant, I went through a change of circumstances and was able to explain to ATW what would benefit me, and why. I wasn’t out to cheat the system, I just wanted to feel that I had a support network focussed on me and equipment to help me, and all for the first time in my professional career.
This site will continue to grow as I have time and remember to add to it… But the idea is to have a place to submit companies that have been good, as well as those that have been bad too. We need to lift each other up, and there’s a lot of ambulance chasing out there. I’ll be putting links to things I recommend (they’ll be affiliate links mainly, and will help fund my Lego addiction). Also, I want you to get in touch. I’ll happily be running some body doubling sessions for doing the application together over teams. My main company is Create Better Things, which you’ll probably see around the site from time to time. Plus I have Automate ADHD as well, which aims to help people with ADHD get some of the stuff that’s either easily forgotten or just plain boring automated for you.
This is a passion project, so a lot of the images are AI generated purely to save time. I’ve tried to avoid things like people with 6 fingers in the images, but it is what it is… I’m trying to use my desire to Create Better Things for myself and others just to help out, but also not completely cripple myself with extra work (again!). So just have a giggle at some of the images and if there’s a typo, forgive me!