Access to Work After a Brain Injury or Stroke

Access to Work after a brain injury or stroke can pay towards the support that makes going back to your job, or staying in it, more manageable. It is a government grant in England, Scotland and Wales, and it is not paid back. After a stroke or brain injury, the help people need is often less visible than a ramp or an adapted chair: support with memory and fatigue, a way to get to work when you cannot drive, or someone to help you relearn parts of the job.

We make Recallify, so we often hear from people working out how to manage memory, fatigue and organisation at work after a brain injury or stroke. This post covers the parts of Access to Work that matter most for that return. For grant limits, waiting times and the wider scheme, start with our Access to Work guide.

Access to Work after a brain injury or stroke: who can apply

You can apply if you have a physical or mental health condition or disability that means you need support to do your job or to get to and from work. You also need to be 16 or over, live and work in England, Scotland or Wales, and be in paid work or about to start or return to paid work in the next 12 weeks. Paid work includes employment, self-employment and apprenticeships, full or part time. Northern Ireland has a different system.

Three points from the gov.uk eligibility rules matter after a brain injury or stroke:

• You can apply before you go back. The 12-week window means you can start the application while you are still off work and planning your return.
• You do not need to expect a permanent condition. gov.uk lists a temporary condition among its examples, so you can apply even if your doctors expect your recovery to continue.
• You do not need a diagnosis to apply. What counts is how the condition affects your work.

DWP’s Access to Work staff guide, used by case managers, says someone whose condition does not substantially affect normal daily activities, but has a considerable adverse effect on their ability to do their job, can also apply. A decision Access to Work makes about disability is for support purposes only.

The effects at work, and why they are easy to miss

Headway, the brain injury charity, describes how a brain injury can affect the skills many jobs rely on. Its guide to returning to work gives examples: memory problems that make it hard to remember important meetings or deadlines, trouble concentrating in a busy and noisy place, difficulty thinking through the steps of a project, and fatigue that makes it harder to concentrate. The Stroke Association lists similar effects after a stroke, including problems with thinking, memory and concentration, aphasia (difficulty speaking or understanding language), fatigue and emotional changes.

Fatigue deserves its own mention. Headway calls it one of the most common effects of brain injury, says people often describe it as fluctuating through the day, and notes that it can make memory problems worse. Working at a computer and dealing with paperwork are among the triggers people report. On the NHS page on recovering from a stroke, recovery can take days or weeks for some people and months or years for others, and you may have to stop work for a while or long term.

The Stroke Association also points out that some effects are not obvious to other people, and that people are sometimes not aware of them until they are back at work. That makes the application harder to write, because the difficulties may only show up once you are doing the job again. Keep a short log in your first weeks back: each time something is forgotten, takes much longer than before, or leaves you exhausted, note what you were doing and what would have helped. Those notes become the evidence for an application for Access to Work after a brain injury or stroke. Our article on long-term support after an acquired brain injury describes the everyday side of this.

A phased return comes from your employer

Many people go back on a phased return, starting with fewer hours and building up. Headway’s example is someone who worked 9am to 5pm returning to a 10am to 3pm day at first, which leaves time to get ready in the morning and rest in the afternoon. The Stroke Association suggests a written return-to-work plan covering the effects of the stroke, the tasks you start with, your hours, regular reviews and breaks, such as five minutes after every hour.

Access to Work does not pay for the phased return itself. gov.uk lists allowing a phased return to work, including flexible hours or part-time working, as a reasonable adjustment: a change the employer has to make under the Equality Act 2010, and one Access to Work will not pay for. What Access to Work adds is the support on top of those adjustments. Our article on returning to work after a brain injury covers planning the return itself.

Support Access to Work can pay for after a stroke or brain injury

gov.uk lists specialist equipment and assistive software, support workers such as a job coach or a travel buddy, the cost of travelling to work if you cannot use public transport, adaptations to your vehicle, and physical changes to the workplace. Your workplace can include your home if you work from there. Four kinds of support come up often in an application for Access to Work after a brain injury.

Getting to work when you cannot drive

The Stroke Association notes that after a stroke or a TIA you cannot drive for a minimum exclusion period, and some people cannot drive for longer or lose their licence. The staff guide says Access to Work will consider an application from someone who used to drive to work but has had to stop because of a health condition, whether the change is temporary or permanent, where suitable public transport is not available. If you can use suitable public transport, you are expected to.

The guide also tells case managers to consider conditions that may improve or get worse over time, when there will be days you can use public transport and days you cannot. In most cases the support is for taxis, and the taxi has to be registered with the local authority or Transport for London. You pay what the journey would normally have cost you: the usual fare, or 25p a mile if you used to drive. Access to Work can also pay the extra mileage when a friend, colleague or relative changes their route to give you a lift.

A job coach to relearn parts of the job

The staff guide says that when someone needs to change the way they do their job, or relearn it, after an illness or accident, a job coach can help with settling in, learning or relearning the job, coping strategies, travel, prompt cards for routine tasks and talking to the employer about reasonable adjustments. Coaching is most intensive at first, normally for up to 26 weeks, then tapers off as you work more independently.

Software and equipment for memory and organisation

Headway lists calendars, wall charts, notes, Dictaphones, alarms and diaries among the tools that can help at work after a brain injury, and points to Access to Work for the cost of specialist equipment. Assistive software that records and transcribes meetings, keeps notes in one place and sends reminders can cover several of these at once. Describe the task first and the tool second: our guide to Access to Work for memory difficulties covers describing them, and our software and assistive technology guide covers trials, quotes and buying.

Mental Health Support Service

Emotional changes, such as feeling anxious, low or tearful, are among the effects both Headway and the Stroke Association describe after a brain injury or stroke. Access to Work offers a separate Mental Health Support Service: a tailored plan to help you stay in work and one-to-one sessions with a mental health professional, over a period of up to 9 months. You apply directly to one of two providers, Able Futures or Maximus, and you can only use it once. DWP’s factsheet for customers says a support plan can include a phased return, such as reduced hours or fewer days.

The employer’s share after a brain injury or stroke

For equipment, software and adaptations, an employer with 50 or more staff normally shares the cost: it pays everything up to £500 (50 to 249 staff) or £1,000 (250 or more), then 20% of the cost up to £10,000. Employers with fewer than 50 staff pay no cost share. Support workers, such as a job coach, and travel to work carry no cost share.

Timing matters. The staff guide says the cost share is waived when the application is made within 6 weeks of returning to work after a disability or health condition began for the first time. So if you are going back after a first stroke or brain injury, applying early can mean Access to Work pays up to the full approved cost of equipment or software. Ask your case manager to confirm how this applies to you. Our cost-share calculator works out the standard figures.

Applying for Access to Work after a brain injury

The person with the condition applies, online at gov.uk or by phone on the Access to Work helpline, 0800 121 7479. You will need your contact details, your workplace address, how the condition affects your work and what support you think you need, and a workplace contact who can confirm your job. That contact is not approached without your permission. gov.uk says that if phone calls are difficult for you, you can ask for all communication to be by email, which may help if aphasia affects your speech. The staff guide also recognises that some people use another person to help with the application.

Someone from Access to Work will contact you, and may arrange for an assessor to talk to you or see your workplace by phone, video call or in person. You will get a decision letter saying how much the grant is and what it should pay for. Buy nothing before then: costs paid before an application is made and agreed are not met.

Support from Access to Work after a brain injury or stroke is not fixed, because recovery can change what you need over months. gov.uk asks you to tell Access to Work if your condition changes. The staff guide tells case managers that a review can be booked and temporary support considered while needs are reassessed. Ask for a review rather than struggling with support that no longer fits.

Where Recallify fits

We built Recallify to help with everyday memory tasks. Our co-founder Dr Sarah Rudebeck is a clinical neuropsychologist with over a decade of NHS and private practice experience, and Recallify is the subject of a feasibility study in brain injury self-management funded by the NIHR. You record a meeting or a passing thought. Recallify transcribes it, summarises it and pulls out tasks. Reminders bring them back when due, and everything stays searchable, on the web, iPhone and Android.

Recallify AT is the licence for workplace use, priced on our Recallify AT price list. Access to Work decides each award and pays towards the most cost-effective option that meets the need, so whether a particular product is funded is a decision for the assessment and the case manager, not for us. Assessors can request a demo account through our assessor toolkit.

Next steps

If you are planning a return, talk to your employer about a phased return and a written plan, and apply for Access to Work after a brain injury or stroke up to 12 weeks before your start date. Applying within 6 weeks of going back can also remove the employer’s share of equipment costs. Keep a log of where work becomes hard, describe the effect on the job rather than the diagnosis, and ask for a review as your needs change. Our full Access to Work guide covers the rest of the scheme.

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 staff guide on 9 November 2026; it is not advice on a particular case.