Episodic disability and adjustments for work: the ‘rehabilitative work’ of returning to employment with Long Covid

Abstract

Long Covid is an activity-limiting condition that causes significant long-term impairment that can last up to one year or longer and impacts labour participation. ‘Episodic disability’ is an apt conceptual framework to comprehend the fluctuating impairments of those with Long Covid and the barriers they encounter when returning to employment. Drawing on 65 narrative interviews, conducted between 2021-2022, from three UK studies involving adults with Long Covid, this article demonstrates how participants experienced a ‘spoiled identity’, had their ‘disability’ status challenged due to existing in-between (dis)ability classifications and experienced their ‘bodies-at-odds’ with their working environment. The additional ‘adjustment’ and ‘administrative’ work of navigating disabling systems required participants to balance workloads to avoid relapse. Utilising ‘episodic disability’ demonstrates that current sickness absence, return-to-work and welfare policies are disabling and unfit for purpose, requiring participants to take sole responsibility for the additional ‘rehabilitative work’ involved in returning to employment.

Rights

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license (http://creativecom-mons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the orig-inal work is properly cited. the terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.

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Identifiers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2024.2331722

Repository URI

http://hdl.handle.net/1893/35924