The Disability Information and Resource Centre

The National Career Development Research Project Survey concludes this Friday 11 March.

The purpose of the survey is to provide the Australian Government with an evidence base for the development of a National Strategy for Career Development for young Australians.

All young people with a disability who complete the survey will have the chance to win a $500 prize!

The Commonwealth Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) has contracted Urbis, an independent social research company to conduct a survey of young people around the country, as well as teachers, parents, government representatives and employers. The purpose of the survey is to provide the Australian Government with an evidence base for the development of a National Strategy for Career Development for young Australians.

All young people with a disability who complete the survey will have the chance to win a $500 prize. It is expected that there will only be some 200 participants so the chance of winning is high!

The survey will seek to explore views on:

• Young peoples’ preparedness for work and the information and advice they receive
• Major gaps in young peoples’ skills and their readiness for work, as well as ways in which these gaps can be addressed
• Who plays a role in supporting the career development needs of young people

A link to the online survey will be forthcoming in the near future.

If you are interested in promoting the survey online more information can be found in the Project Information Sheet.

1,000 Postcards Presented to Minister O’Connor

The National Council on Intellectual Disability (NCID), together with families, employees and employers,
delivered 1000 postcards to the Hon. Brendan O’Connor MP, Minister for Employment Participation.
The postcards express the need for a national employment strategy, which provides young people with intellectual disability the opportunity to secure a job. Specifically, the postcards ask the Minister to:
• fund enough places of assistance for those who want to work,
• ensure that a specialist intellectual disability open employment service is available,
• recognise that this jobseeker group requires on-the-job training and ongoing support to succeed,
• ensure employee and employer relationships, and family confidence, is not undermined by plans to tender
out employment services, and,
• find ways to increase the employment participation of people with intellectual disability by looking at
evidence based practice.

“With only 5 weeks of this school year remaining, families are counting on the Commonwealth to deliver on its social inclusion policy; ‘that every Australian should have the opportunity to secure a job’,” said Mark Pattison, NCID spokesperson.
“We estimate that there are 2000 school leavers with intellectual disability who will be seeking to move from
school to work. Yet specialist intellectual disability open employment services do not have the funded capacity to provide assistance to this group. Families urgently need the Commonwealth to act,” Pattison added.

NCID believes that the new Commonwealth government has the opportunity to set in motion its commitment to social inclusion by ensuring that these young people are included in real jobs in the community and do not become another ‘unemployment’ or ‘not in the labour force’ statistic.
Furthermore, families are concerned about plans to regularly tender open employment services. Many are worried about how this will impact ongoing relationships between employees, employers and services. Families want to be assured that when they choose open employment, the support will be ongoing without interruption.

For the long term, families want to see training and technical assistance provided to build the competency of the open employment sector so that all jobseekers with intellectual disability will receive assistance that is best practice.

National Council on
Intellectual Disability
PO Box 771
Mawson ACT 2607
02 6296 4400
mark.pattison@ncid.org.au
For Details, Contact:
Mark Pattison
Executive Director
0407 406 647