Disability employment gap

I'm running a research initiative, hoping to launch our Pilot study in Kingston upon Thames. We can employ 300 disabled people into full-time real living wage employment. We have the employees ready, and a keen experienced team. The trouble is that the local DWP(JCP)  no longer do the New Deal for disability employment, and funding is discretionary. Our initiative has been looked at and approved by council officers and disability officers in other offices with approval. It is a shame that the town I have been an independent advocate in for the last 20 years does not want to save the £3 million in unneeded income-related benefits.  nor the extra money that would go into local businesses from the wages my employees would put into the local economy. After our pilot study, we are ready to go to every town across London. Building communities, building Disability confidence and building apprenticeships.. 

Disabled people are still treated like second class citizens by some of our citizens, imtimmidated and bullied by some of the so called leaders and some choose to ignore us. We need work trials please, in the private sector and the public sector. Employers should be approached about employing more disable people and their strenghts should be sold to employers. In this country, we have a long way to go and AI may benefit disabled people as we could travel to work in AI cars and some AI programs can help those with speech difficulties to communicate, using bluetooth communication devices and nano communication technology.

Technology will help disabled people defeat the aristricratic discrimnators that have existed since time began. They tend to look like the old banking character in the vintage Mary Poppins movie. These people want people who look like them and sound like them, and are petrified of change and diversity. The Mayor needs to promote opportunties in London for the disabled workforce and open up opportunities for them.

All London Underground stations  and overground stations should have disable access via technological lifts by 2030.

Come on Mr Mayor promote more work opportunities for the disabled by making them more independent. AI technology bring it on.

Improved access to public transport needs to be made a matter of priority for people with a disability.  Step free access to all London Underground and tube stations should be made a priority to enable those who could travel to work on public transport a preferable option.  Outer London boroughs on the underground network are overlooked and in the 21st Century this needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency.

Many years ago I worked in a company named Handley Page Ltd., Airframe Constructors, of about 4,500 employees. It had its main works in Crickelwood with an aditional branch near St Albans (and at one time in Rerading too). This company had a policy of employing disabled persons along with regular workers.

The attitude within the company to the disabled people was friendly and everyone (except for a few malcontents) tried to encourage the disabled ones to do their easier kinds of jobs. This way our company was sucessful and efficient, due to the inspired management lead by its aircraft pioneer, Sir Fredric Handley Page.

A work study book that I was supposed to read at that time, in the 1950's was titled "The Makings of a Moron", which showed how workers in indudtry tend to became moronic due to the kinds of work they were doing. The purpose of this book was not to criticise management, but rather to show that many kinds of work in industry can be done by moronic people and that the employment of disabled persons is not necessarily a disadvantage. indeed as I mentioned above it has certain benefits too in the general attitude and feelings that many workers took to what seemed to be kindly motivated managers.

My wife was working whilst receiving DLA - which see is perfectly entitled to do and as a result a manager with whom she was in dispute malicioudsly reported her to the DWP who kept her under secret surveillance for a year & prosecuted her. She was found completely innocent but the stress nearly killed both of us.

The numbers of people receiving DLA/PIP who are working is around 8% compared with disabled people's employment of 54%. Not surprising why, is it?

Bitter - you don't know the half of it.

My son has a learning disability and ensuring he had a job when he left college was a real worry.  We were very fortunate in that a really proactive worker at the Community Access Project in Islington supported him to find a local job where he has been for 2 years.  But it was often by chance that I found out about services out there who could help. There is a lot of talk about supporting disabled people into work but it requires joining up of services eg education, employers, local authority, to make sure the disabled person is adequately supported to access work opportunities.  Completing application forms, getting to and attending interviews are all potential hurdles to prevent someone applying for jobs and that's before employers are even on board with the kind of support and adaptations disabled employees may need. The statistics show that if you are disabled it will be much harder to find employment, especially if you have a learing disability.  I am not sure how this can be improved with significant cuts to services in recent years?  

Why bother ? Nothing ever changes.I have been disabled for over 30 years.I now have chronic disabilities and am virtually housebound because I cannot get out.I have 3 Underground stations near me.2 have steps going up to the platforms and one going down.I can't use any of them

Need to enforce laws about disability discrimination. It is worse not better for disabled people in 2019. Public transport is still an issue on buses which are overcrowded and do not pull up to the kerb for easy access and then forget to stop to let people off. My son, who is disabled is persevering through a civil service apprenticeship despite constant horrendous bullying from older staff and so called trainers who see all disability as a problem to be gotten rid of. I have a young son who has no school place due to been bullied out of his school by teachers and students due to his autism. We battle on with absolutely no help in site. What help is there?

The most obvious is discrimination, most employers would lnot ook at an application from a disabled applicant.

As a disabled person I sent out 350 application & got no interviews, I sent out 10 not mentioned my disablity & got 1 interview, the disabled need some help, not in just getting jobs, but getting too the workplace

interesting question.

i think it is left to the values of the appointing officer. disabled people are disadvantaged because iyt is still based on the type of employment and the appointing officer.

employment is very much dependent on previous work experience and qualification.

that in it self excludes persons with disbilities from employment because due to disability it will take longer to qualify and maybe even when qualified has not had thye opportunity to have work ecxperience.

https://www.dfnprojectsearch.org is an initiative that has been extended to the UK by DFN Foundation and have a really good Transition - to-Work programme. I think this is excellent and they are getting commitment from big organisations to employ more people with disabilities.

I am a Careers Adviser and have worked in secondary, further and higher education for many years.  I also work on a voluntary basis with a 'Work Club' for clients in need of help from various backgrounds.  Some of these are referred to us from the local Job Centre and many have disabilities both physical and mental of varying degrees.  The universal problem is that current practices in recruitment, interviewing and employment are not inclusive, it doesn't really matter if employers say they are 'disability friendly' when the reality is that a great deal of them would just make excuses for not employing someone who they are going to have to help to succeed or make special provision for whether that is providing proper physical surroundings or just being more understanding and flexible where mental health is concerned.  This is across all types of employer.  The worst situation is that online recruitment is brutal.  If you are a graduate at one of the top universities in this country you will face challenges with getting a job but usually you will be resilient and capable enough to forge a path and get where you want to be.  However if you are a person with a disability and with multiple other barriers to employment e.g. unfamiliarity with the recruitment process, housing uncertainty, transport, requirement to attend frequent health appointments, anxiety or other issues, then finding an employer that is prepared to support you holistically is very very rare.  There are so many other issues at stake and to solve them would require a combination of mutli-agency and creative minds to work out a suitable set of initiatives that would really work in practice.  As another commenter said - I would be happy to join in such a panel!

I have relapsing remitting MS.  I'm at the very mild end of the scale - most of the time you'd never know there was anything wrong with me.  Most of the time I woudn't either. But testing has revealed mild cognitive impairment - affecting my "executive skills". As someone with three degrees and used to working at a high level this is difficult. My public sector job is demanding and stressful and stress makes MS symptoms worse! My performance is suffering and I worry about being performance managed out of my job, Equalities Act be d**ned. The stress and competing demands on my attention are harder to deal with than before my illness and I find myself panicking or getting emotional.

What I need is more time to complete some tasks and plan my work, fewer interruptions, less stress. More routine and regular hours would help - at the moment I have to attend evening meetings which can throw my whole week out of whack if I don't get to bed on time. And I need understanding - with an invisible disability I feel people only see the woman who runs marathons, not the woman who was struck down by fatigue on race day once and couldn't get out of bed. (and when people remark that perhaps I should take it easy, I need them to understand that aside from my medication, exercise is the single biggest factor keeping me healthy and at work). 

I also worry that if I sustain this level of stress at work my disease will progress leading to increased disability and reduce my chances of future meaningful employment.