A day to change perceptions on disabilities in workplace

When was the last time you were helped by an employee with a disability? Would you have known? Not necessarily.

Is a disabled person somebody in a wheelchair, or living with an injury from a car crash? Perhaps it’s somebody with a mental health issue.

It is all of these things and more but as Greg Barry, chairman of the Irish Association for Supported Employment (IASE) points out, the reality can be lost in a haze of assumption. Valuable workers mistaken for the opposite. "They are not seeing the person," he says.

In reality, people probably encounter workers with disabilities far more often than they realise. It’s just not as apparent as we might think it ought to be.

The association holds its National Supported Employment Week from Monday, the highlight of which is Job Shadow Day on Wednesday during which people with disabilities are invited to accompany someone during a regular working day.

This is not a token initiative, it is part of greater strides taken by the association since its inception in 1994 to promote and operate support structures for those who only wish to work.

The concept behind “supported employment” is assistance in both securing and maintaining positions – the association helps with job hunting and buoys successful applicants throughout.

“It’s breaking down barriers and trying to de-stigmatise stigmas,” explains Mr Barry.

The process begins when job seekers tell them what he or she is interested in. The association helps with CVs and interview techniques and later in the actual workplace as a “job coach”, thereby neutralising any misconception the business need invest more in additional training.

Through its work, the association has helped with jobs in numerous sectors: retail, pharmaceutical, healthcare, finance and hospitality among them.

“’Shall we give poor Johnny a job and a tenner a week?’ It’s not that. People have to have a value to the company, something that needs to be done and makes business sense,” Mr Barry says.

Counter perceptions

In that regard, supported employment works not so much to squeeze a few people with disabilities into “real jobs”, but to counter perceptions those living with

disability

are incapable of offering value. This may seem obvious, but in real terms the country appears to have a way to go.

With the exception of a dip in 2010, Job Shadow participation by companies has increased every year since its inception seven years ago, so that by last year there were twice as many companies (501) enrolled as in 2008 (238). While of a total of 2,790 participants in that time, just 112 actual jobs have materialised, the initiative is more about raising awareness and changing perspectives.

It is estimated 13 per cent of the population are people with disabilities. They are twice as likely not to be at work, even though one in three who are not working wish to be.

Latest figures quoted by the association show 4,200 people now at work through supported employment.

Disability itself is a tricky word. As Mr Barry says, it is not always flagged by a wheelchair or a walking stick. Those whom his association reaches out to include the intellectually disabled as well as people who have been in accidents.

There is also mental health. For instance Stuart (his name has been changed) who was a child when he was in a car crash that claimed the life of a close relative. From then on he began to lose control and years later sought help for anxiety and depression.

He is scathing of the psychiatric services he says utterly failed him. “I was told I would never make anything out of my life. I was an 18-year-old scared boy. I didn’t know where I was going or what I was doing,” he says of that period in his life.“I had started to realise that it was going to be very, very difficult to get back into employment.”

Stuart battled stigma and bullying in the workplace but he found he could cope with the support of the IASE, and in particular Mr Barry.

“It was a great help to know that there was somebody out there who could understand and that if you went into employment and the manager was bullying you it wasn’t actually your fault,”adds Stuart.

Maintaining constant contact with the association he eventually found himself a job in retail where he has been, happily, for the last 10 years.

“I would feel that there is a small bit of stigma still there and if you were to go for an interview in the morning the disability part of it is a factor to stop you getting a job.”

Not enough people are aware of the services offered by the likes of the IASE which should be more tied in with business, he says.

“If there is one thing I have learned in life it’s that we all deserve a chance.”

Mr Barry explains that while change has come about, it is slow. There are companies who embrace it proactively (Irishjobs.ie has actively promoted supported employment) and others that don’t.

“It comes down to the HR manager you talk to. If they don’t buy into disability management they won’t take them on,” he says.

One multinational told him they had a “bad experience” of hiring someone with a disability and wouldn’t repeat it.

“I asked if they had ever had a bad experience with a person without disability.”

These varying attitudes – often the product of traditional ignorance – are reflected in the ongoing process of drawing up a national “comprehensive employment strategy for people with disabilities”.

In train since the publication of the Disability Act 2005, it has been a long time coming and, despite honourable intentions, is not without detractors.

One of the stakeholders is Inclusion Ireland which works to ensure those with disabilities "are not isolated or segregated and can lead more independent and healthier lives".

Conception

While the strategy is still in its conception, chief executive

Paddy Connolly

sees its targets as “tragically unambitious”.

“Even in the boom times when we had full employment very few people with a disability were lifted with the economy,” he says, explaining companies may need incentives, possibly in the form of subsidies.

“Maybe there is a need for some level of compulsion but you are talking about an open market and the Government would be very reluctant to interfere with that.

“Where we have high levels of unemployment, persons with a disability are going to find it hard to find work.

“I would imagine many employers, given the opportunity and the right incentives, would bring people in. But if it’s out of sight people don’t think about it and when they do they probably face a lot of questions like how do we support people, and the additional costs of it.”

And so as efforts rumble on to bring about a consensus on promoting the disabled in the workplace, how far might we be from a solution, or an ideal world in which high levels of employment are achieved?

“I think we are decades away from it,” says Mr Connolly. As an example of the realities, he points to a three per cent level of disabled employment reached within the public sector. “But that was supposed to be a minimum, not a target,” he laments. “It became the target.”