Ms Claire Hayes:

I thank Senator O'Loughlin for the questions. I will take them in two pieces. In terms of key recommendations in order to improve the experience of people with disabilities moving into education, the Open Doors initiative works with anyone who is 17 and upwards, so I can only speak to third level and further education, although that might be helpful in this instance. As Ms Walsh has already pointed out, there is a bit of a drop when people get to that point. The way we generally approach our training, in particular awareness training, is that we are moving from the medical model to the social model. We no longer put the onus of resolving the issue or problem on the shoulders of the person with a disability, and we look at it from a social perspective and in terms of what systems are actually creating the issues.

From speaking to different employers and some educators, I know there is much fear. Ms Finn has spoken about this. The Senator is on about people's lack of awareness and knowledge and a fear of offending. A hugely important and vital thing that we could do for our educators moving forward is to introduce disability awareness training as part of professional development, and not just as one course, but as something that is continued on.

It would be incredibly helpful if we had a standard of accessibility for lectures and learning spaces. From Covid, we have seen different tech improve. For example, we have closed captioning on MS Teams now. We can access all of this supportive technology that should be utilised within the classroom. This information should be shared with our educators and lecturers.

As part of the standard of training, it will create an awareness and permanence and the ability to have those conversations. Most importantly, we will teach our educators to see the potential of their students. It is not about learning how to teach people with a disability, it is about being aware and able to see their full potential and guide them properly on their career paths. I hope that covers the key recommendations. I do not want to take up too much time focusing on that piece.

In terms of grants and supports, the feedback I have come across from our participants is that they struggle to find what they need, to gather it and figure who they need to speak to. I know things have started to change a little bit so there are some more centralised hubs and there are different organisations. However, one of the things we are looking and hoping to build is a centralised hub of resources that could point and signpost people to where they need to seek support. The hub could inform people of what grants are available and also include a really simple way of showing how a person’s supports or grants will be impacted if he or she takes up employment or education – for example, "at this level, this is how it will change". That way, people will have a full sight and a full picture. At the moment, we are finding fear across all educators and our participants. This fear of not knowing is creating a barrier as well and a lack of confidence in the knowledge that they have. Opening up a hub or some sort of centralised online system where people can find out that information immediately and in an easy an accessible way could be very important. I hope that answers the Senator’s questions and I am happy to fill out any more she may have.