Ms Rachel Cassen:

: I would like to answer some of Deputy Cairns's questions on RISE, specifically, and I will also touch on Deputy Canney's previous questions. RISE is an organisation that has a great history. Its members have presented to the National Disability Authority. What they and other supported employment organisations such as Inclusion Alberta in Alberta, Canada, have found is that supported employment is the way to go. The type of employment support projects or initiatives we have traditionally had for people with intellectual disabilities and autism, more commonly known as developmental disabilities in North America, do not necessarily provide the right types of support on the job. Supported employment can assist an employer, for example, to look at a job that is not already being done in an organisation and to create a new job that does not exist. Employers might go into a plant, factory or warehouse and see there is a particular task that is not being done. They would then carve out a new role for a person to go in and take on, for full payment and with full terms and conditions provided.

We also want to mention Inclusion Alberta, to which LEAP has taken families. We have undertaken study tours around the world and we have taken families to countries and organisations that are doing extraordinary work towards the full inclusion of people with disabilities. Many of them are family-based organisations. The committee might want to look at Inclusion Alberta. It has a Rotary employment partnership whereby it works with Rotarians, businesspeople and the like in communities. It does not use job coaches but places people with intellectual disabilities in open employment using the Rotary Club as its main partner. There is no job coach but support is provided by an inclusion facilitator. It is extraordinarily successful. It leverages the support of the community and business partners in that community to place people in jobs. The workers, as we know, are extremely loyal and extremely good at timekeeping.

We know this because LEAP has spent time there. We have been to Alberta on three occasions. We have spent time with these projects to learn what is best in employment practice for people with intellectual disabilities. We use 13 as the base age because that is the typical and normative age at which all of us in this meeting probably got our first part-time job. I know I had mine when I was 11. Back in England all those years ago, I had a paper round. Many of us started work at 11, 12, 13 or 14. If we are parents, hopefully our own children started work around that time. It has got a little later with the pandemic. It has probably not happened at all. If it has, it has probably not happened in the same way. As always with everything in LEAP, we recommend that young people and children with disabilities do what their peers are doing at the same age and stage. When we say "peers", we do not mean other people with the same diagnosis.