Our voice on careers and
employment
Liz Sayce
Making rights real
So we can participate
The social model
• Social model – remove barriers!
• Too much blaming the individual
• Work Programme – at best 88% failure
rate with disabled people. After 2 years
Job Seekers Allowance claimants have to
do mandatory community work
placements or sign on daily etc
• Shouldn’t the state have to provide better
support?
Countering the blame game
Let’s Stop Disability Hate Crime
A guide for setting up third party
reporting centres
Campaigning for
careers on our terms
• Social Care Portability now accepted as a
right. Worked with Jane Campbell in Lords
• Access to Work: numbers going up at last
(over 31,000 2012-13 – with over 10,000
new starts, more than the previous year –
including ‘ways in’ eg supported
internships, work experience)
• Getting disabled people’s voices heard
Victoria
MacDonald
• It’s the non-work programme, charity
says
• Calling for a radical rethink, Disability
Rights UK points to the government’s own
figures which reveal a 95 per cent failure
rate in finding sustainable work for those
on the work programme. Liz Sayce
described the work programme as the
“non-work programme”.
Taking control of
employment support
• Over 500 people shared experiences – 3
quarters want to know the resources available to
use them and be able to decide on their support
• Top down employment programmes do not work
eg National Audit Office – Pathways to Work did
not make a difference
• Work Choice a little better but does not reach
those facing greatest barriers eg 58 people with
mental health problems helped to get jobs in GB
compared to 201 in one part of London with
individualised approach
3 propositions
• Real opportunities for employment, not
make-do employment
• Personalised support, that we can control
• Skills boost for decent careers
But – need policy shifts
• Poverty: JRF, All
party disability group
• Skills, apprentices
• Pip 20 metres/ 50
metres – exploring
further challenge
• WCA appeals
• Universal credit
• Portable social care
• Transport eg travel
cards, training
What can we do locally
and nationally?
• Involve more people - one in 5 of the population is covered by
Equality Act definition of disability
• Many see themselves in terms of their impairment or ‘illness’ – but
everyone needs to strip away disabling barriers!
• Let’s not go back to ‘illness’ language
• Campaign for young disabled people’s job opportunities
• Young disabled people are twice as likely to be not in education,
employment or training than non-disabled – a national crisis
• Locally and nationally we can work together to stop another
generation being out of work for decades
• Take advantage of some jobs coming on stream….?
• Campaign for our rights to independent living and opportunities