Access to Work for ADHD with Examples of Support

Access to Work for ADHD is government support in England, Scotland and Wales that can pay for practical help at work when ADHD means you need support to do your job. gov.uk names ADHD among its examples of conditions, and you do not need a diagnosis to apply. The grant is not paid back. What it pays for depends on how ADHD affects your work, so this article sets out concrete examples of support, from strategy sessions and a job coach to assistive software, and how to describe your needs.

We make Recallify, an app for capturing what was said, turning it into tasks and bringing them back when they are due, so we hear questions about support at work from people with ADHD and their employers. This article covers the examples. For eligibility in full, grant limits, claims and waiting times, see our Access to Work guide.

Eligibility for Access to Work with ADHD

The gov.uk eligibility rules ask for a physical or mental health condition or disability that means you need support to do your job or to get to and from work. ADHD and dyslexia appear in the list of examples, alongside autism, anxiety and depression. You also need to be 16 or over, in paid work or about to start or return to it within 12 weeks, and to live and work in England, Scotland or Wales. Northern Ireland has its own scheme, Access to Work (NI).

Paid work includes employment, self-employment, an apprenticeship, an internship and a work placement, and you can apply if you work from home some or all of the time. Civil servants cannot apply: their employer arranges support instead. If you work for yourself, our guide for self-employed people and freelancers covers the turnover test and evidence.

Access to Work for ADHD follows the same rules as for any other condition, so the name of the condition matters less than its effect on the job. The NHS lists signs of inattention in ADHD in adults such as being easily distracted or forgetful, finding it hard to organise your time and finding it hard to follow instructions or finish tasks. NICE guidance on ADHD (NG87) says a person’s plan should address occupational or educational needs, and that the conversation after diagnosis can include rights to reasonable adjustments in the workplace. Those are the effects an application needs to describe, in terms of your own work.

Adjustments first, Access to Work on top

Access to Work will not pay for reasonable adjustments, the changes an employer is legally required to make, and it will tell the employer when a change should be made as one. The NHS gives examples for ADHD: a personalised workspace in a quiet area, written instructions as well as spoken ones, and help from another person to plan and structure tasks. The employer’s duty, and how to ask for changes, are covered in our guide to reasonable adjustments for ADHD in the workplace.

Access to Work for ADHD is for support beyond those changes. In practice, many people ask for both at once: the adjustments from the employer, and an application for the extra help that the employer would not be expected to provide.

Examples of Access to Work for ADHD

gov.uk says a grant can help pay for specialist equipment and assistive software, support workers such as a job coach, and travel and workplace changes. DWP’s Access to Work staff guide, the guidance case managers follow, describes the kinds of support worker in more detail. The examples below come from those two sources. They are options to discuss with an assessor or case manager, not a list of guaranteed items: Access to Work pays towards the most cost-effective support that meets the need.

Coping strategy sessions

The staff guide’s table of support workers includes a “Support Worker (Coping strategies)”: strategy training to help people with specific learning difficulties or mental health issues manage their daily life at work. It gives an average of 12 sessions in a 12-month period, with funding lasting no longer than 12 months. A broader “Support Worker” type covers strategy training for people with neurodiverse conditions to cope better in work.

This is the nearest the staff guide comes to what is often called ADHD coaching; it does not use that term. Sessions might work on planning a week, breaking a project into steps or building a routine for email. Because the funding is time-limited, it suits a goal agreed at the start.

A support worker for organisation and admin

The staff guide gives an example of a self-employed person with autism or ADHD who finds it hard to organise and prioritise their work and asks for someone to keep them on track. It draws a line between two kinds of help. If the support worker takes over the paperwork and tells the person what to do and when, that is replacement support, capped at 20% of contracted hours. If the person stays in charge and asks the support worker, for example, to read over an email before sending it, that is enabling support, which can be up to 100% of contracted hours.

A support worker must not do the person’s job for them, except as a job aide within that 20% limit. So describe the tasks you need help with and how you would direct the support worker.

A job coach when starting a job

A job coach gives on-site support to someone who has a job to start. The staff guide describes help with settling in, induction, learning the role and coping strategies, with an action plan agreed early on. Support is most intensive at the start and then tapers off, and the staff guide sets a maximum of 26 weeks for the role. Access to Work does not fund coaching to find a job, and it does not fund workplace mentors.

Assistive software and equipment

Software is the support most people picture. For ADHD, the useful categories tend to be:

• Capturing spoken information: recording and transcription, so actions from a meeting or call are not lost when attention drifts. Recording needs the agreement of the people being recorded.
• Tasks and reminders: tools that hold a task in one place and bring it back when it is due, rather than when it was set.
• Reading and writing: text-to-speech, dictation and planning tools, particularly where dyslexia occurs alongside ADHD.

Check that any software works with your employer’s devices and systems before anything is bought. Our guide to assistive software through Access to Work covers trials, quotes and the purchase once support is agreed.

Disability awareness training for colleagues

The Access to Work factsheet for customers lists disability awareness training for colleagues among the things a grant can pay for. For ADHD, that can help a team understand requests such as written follow-ups after meetings or fewer interruptions during focused work.

Mental health support

The NHS notes that people with ADHD may be more likely to have anxiety and depression. Access to Work also offers support to manage your mental health at work: a tailored plan and one-to-one sessions with a mental health professional. DWP’s Mental Health Support Service guidance describes it as non-clinical support for up to 9 months, confidential, at no cost to you or your employer, and available with or without your employer’s knowledge. You apply directly to Able Futures or Maximus, not both, and you can only receive it once.

Matching support to ADHD at work

An application for Access to Work for ADHD is clearer when each difficulty is paired with the help that would meet it. A few illustrations:

• Losing actions from meetings. Ask the employer for written follow-ups; in the application, describe recording and transcription software that turns the meeting into a list you can return to.
• Starting and finishing tasks. Coping strategy sessions to build a routine, with task and reminder software to support it between sessions.
• Prioritising a heavy workload. An enabling support worker for planning and admin, directed by you.
• A new job with a lot to learn. A job coach for the first months, tapering off as the role becomes familiar.
• Feeling overwhelmed or anxious at work. The Mental Health Support Service, alongside any of the above.

These are examples rather than rules. The same difficulty can call for different help in a warehouse, a classroom and an office, so tie each one to your own job.

Describing your ADHD needs in an application

You apply online at gov.uk or through the Access to Work helpline on 0800 121 7479. The application asks how your condition affects your work and what support you think you need. Specific examples carry more weight than a general description. “I lose track of the actions agreed in the weekly team meeting and have to ask colleagues to repeat them” tells a case manager more than “I struggle to concentrate”.

One way to gather examples is to keep a short log for a week or two. Each time something is forgotten, late or started and abandoned, note what you were doing, what went wrong and what would have helped. Three or four clear entries are enough to start with, and the log is also useful when you talk to your manager.

If you know what support you need, say so: the customer factsheet says you do not need an assessment in that case. Otherwise a workplace assessment can be arranged by phone, video call or in person. The decision letter states the grant amount and what it should pay for. Buy nothing before it arrives, because the staff guide says costs paid before an application is made and agreed are not met.

The employer’s share for ADHD support

Support workers, job coaches and the Mental Health Support Service carry no employer cost share: the employers’ factsheet says Access to Work will consider paying up to 100% of them. For equipment and software, an employer with 50 or more staff pays a share if the person had been in the job for more than 6 weeks when they applied. Employers with fewer than 50 staff and self-employed people pay none. The staff guide’s Tech Fund can also waive the share for medium and large employers where assistive technology supplements or replaces human support. Our cost-share calculator works out the split for a given cost.

Where Recallify fits

We built Recallify for the everyday memory and follow-through tasks described above. You record a meeting, a call or a passing thought. Recallify transcribes it, summarises it and pulls out tasks with deadlines, then reminds you when each is due, on the web, iPhone and Android. Our co-founder Dr Sarah Rudebeck is a clinical neuropsychologist. Our page on the Recallify app for ADHD shows the features in more detail.

Recallify AT is the licence for workplace use, from £130 for one year with no VAT added, on our Recallify AT price list. You can mention it in an application or an assessment, but Access to Work decides each award and pays towards the most cost-effective option that meets the need. Whether a particular product is funded is a decision for the case manager, not for us.

Next steps

Start with the effects of ADHD on your own work, recorded as specific examples. Ask your employer for reasonable adjustments, then apply for Access to Work for ADHD to cover the extra support: strategy sessions, a support worker, a job coach, software or mental health support, whichever fits the need. Access to Work for ADHD is not paid back and does not affect other benefits. Our Access to Work guide has the application steps, grant limits and DWP’s latest figures on waiting times.

Recallify is designed as an everyday support tool and is not a medical device. It does not provide diagnosis or clinical decision support, and is intended to complement, not replace, professional medical care. This article is general information about Access to Work, checked against gov.uk and DWP’s guidance on 9 November 2026; it is not advice on a particular case.