At the end of 2020, Social Scaffolding together with our co-design partners; held the Equalising Employment Forum. This forum brought together people with disability, employers and industry partners to engage in thought provoking discussions aimed at creating positive and innovative solutions for increasing and equalising employment opportunities.
First of all, we would like to send out a huge thank you to all the attendees for participating in the Forum. The level of enthusiasm and passion in the room to create meaningful change that would lead to equalising employment for all members of our community was fantastic.
It is a sobering and disheartening fact that in 2020 people with disability in Australia continue to be less likely to be participating in the labour force than those without (53.4% to 84.1%). Despite these facts what we saw at the forum was a high level of resilience and innovative thinking to go beyond these statistics to create change.
As one of the forum facilitators so beautifully said, “We are aiming for:
Everyone who wants a job to be able to obtain one
Increased update of higher skills jobs and more flexible opportunities
Workplace discrimination to be a thing of the past with higher participation rates of people with severe and profound disability
Diversity being encouraged with specific strategies in place
Reasonable adjustments in place with specific strategies to recruit and attract employees with disability.”
These are not unrealistic expectations!
As we move forward, our question is – What can we all do to remove the physical, technological and attitudinal barriers for people with disability so that we can achieve true inclusiveness?
Social Scaffolding compiled an analysis and review of actions that came out of the forum.